


the colour of wet sand

by bluebacchus, winterlain



Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Photographer, Childhood Trauma, Domestic Violence, F/M, Found Family, Gaslighting, Healing, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Infidelity, Journalism, M/M, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-03
Updated: 2020-09-03
Packaged: 2021-03-06 02:15:25
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 44,030
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25795735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebacchus/pseuds/bluebacchus, https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterlain/pseuds/winterlain
Summary: It starts with a long line at Tesco, a call from a random phone number, and a magazine edited by a man who drinks iced tea from a whisky bottle. Thomas Jopson answers the phone, and it changes everything.Or, it starts with a funeral he didn’t attend, or maybe with a wedding. Edward Little has never been good at choosing who to love, and he’s only getting worse.A slow burn modern AU about healing, love, and finding a place that feels like home.
Relationships: Background Francis Crozier/Sophia Cracroft, Background Lt John Irving/Thomas Hartnell, Thomas Jopson/Elisabeth Jopson, Thomas Jopson/Lt Edward Little
Comments: 17
Kudos: 36
Collections: The Terror Big Bang 2020





	1. I.

**Author's Note:**

> Please note the content warnings. Some of it gets dark, and I can only promise a happy ending as consolation. 
> 
> CW for 
> 
> Domestic abuse/Gaslighting/Domestic violence/emotional abuse/financial abuse  
> Referenced past child abuse (including physical; the only graphic scene is written in italics so it is easy to find and skip)  
> Referenced past drug abuse (Jopson's mother)  
> Mental health issues including OCD, PTSD, and Depression

It starts with a long line at Tesco, a random phone number, and a magazine he’s never heard of.

He should be home by now. Elsa is on her way. He promised to have dinner ready for her when she gets home from work. But the woman standing at the till had unearthed a pile of coupons and now the cashier scans them, one by one. Tom taps a foot, but he means nothing by it. He’s been on the other side of the counter. If something miraculous doesn’t happen soon, he’ll be back in the green uniform before the month is out.

His phone rings. It’s a miracle.

It rings so rarely that he looks around in annoyance to find the arsehole who is letting their phone ring out before he realizes in shame that it is him.

“Hello?” he answers. It’s not a mechanical voice telling him he’s won a free cruise, and Tom is so surprised it takes him a moment to comprehend what the person on the other line is telling him.

“Yes, this is Tom Jopson. An interview? The Ross Museum? Sorry, are _you_ the Ross Museum? Oh, that makes sense, they never called me back… yes. Wonderful. Cheers.”

He slides the phone back into his pocket and kicks the meagre basket of groceries forwards as the line moves. Feeling impulsive, he throws a Twirl bar into the basket. He’ll eat it on the way back to the flat, ditch the receipt, and Elsa will never have to know. It’s not even on sale, but he has a job interview at a magazine he’s never heard of, and this might change everything.

It’s Tom’s first steady photography job after years of living contract to contract; years of telling Elsa _one more try before I go back to college and become a mechanic, or an electrician, or I go back to the old Tesco job and try to work my way up to middle management where I’ll rot away behind a desk in the back room of a grocery store for the rest of my life._

She doesn’t see it like that. Where he sees misery, she sees stability. He can’t fault her for that.

He’s hired on the spot by the editor of a small, subversive press that focuses on special interest pieces with nothing in common except that they’re all tangentially related to boats.

“Francis Crozier,” the editor introduces himself. He’s wearing a Hawaiian shirt buttoned up to the neck and carrying a half full bottle of whisky. He sits down in a squashy armchair in the small reception area and pours himself and Tom a generous glass. It is nine in the morning. Thomas sips it slowly, wondering what he has just walked into. The flavour surprises him, and he sips again. It’s iced tea.

“I want you on _The Mariner_ ,” Francis says without preamble.

“Yes, sir,” Thomas says. He’s never heard of it, but it’s a job.

Francis nods. “I hope you like boats, Mr. Jopson.”

Tom doesn’t have the courage to tell him he’s never been on a boat before.

He comes home from the interview with a greasy bag of fish and chips as celebration. He shares the elevator with Mr. Pryor, whose nose wrinkles at the smell. The elevator stops at the seventh floor, and they both get off.

“I’ve filed another complaint about that damn door of yours,” his neighbour says. What he means is _your damn wife slams the door too loud_ _and if you don’t make her stop I’ll get you both evicted._

Tom sighs. “I’m trying, Mr. Pryor.”

“Try harder.” It’s an answer Tom is used to hearing. He unlocks the door, eases it shut quietly after him. Elsa is sitting on the couch where the light from the window hits. She is hand-sewing a tiny dress.

“Who’s getting the new dress?” he asks, depositing the bag of food on the kitchen counter. It’s cluttered, messy. There are dishes in the sink that weren’t there when he left.

“Ebonie,” Elsa says. “I thought she’d look nice in Regency.”

Tom combs his memory, trying to remember all the names of Elsa’s dolls, but he can’t place it. He knows Marta and Riley and Hannah and Anne by name and the rest by sight—he has to, since they’re all over their bedroom—but he can’t place Ebonie.

He quashes the feeling of dread as he asks which one she is.

He receives the answer he fears. “She’s new.”

Elsa’s doll collecting is a relatively new thing. In the last two years she’s managed to acquire enough dolls that nearly every surface in their apartment has at least one toddler-sized doll perched on it. Tom knows how much they cost and feels queasy. With him being out of work for the last four months and Elsa’s shifts at the hospital being cut—Tom wonders where the money is coming from.

He doesn’t want it to be a fight.

Not today. Not when he’s still riding the high of finally being offered a job.

“I got the job,” he says, pulling the box of chips out of the brown paper bag. He sets them down on the counter at the feet of the cowgirl doll that stands in his way. The box she came in is still in the closet with the vacuum. He was innocently putting it away last week when the box fell, and the receipt fluttered onto the ground. _Riley Doll, Special Edition. £275._ He looks into her glassy blue eyes and slides the box of chips away.

Elsa finally looks up from her sewing. A piece of lace dangles from the hem of the dress.

“Oh, that’s good news,” she says. And then: “I’m switching to night shifts.”

“More good news,” Tom says. He leaves his hopes for any sort of congratulations in the sink with the dirty dishes and he goes to sit next to his wife on the sofa. “They pay more, don’t they?”

Elsa rolls her eyes and ignores the box of chips Tom offers.

“God, is all you care about money?”

Tom shuts his eyes and counts to ten.

“I thought we agreed to put aside some money to fix the washing machine. I know how much your dolls cost.”

“Give me a baby and I’ll stop buying dolls.”

“We can’t,” Tom says. “Not yet.”

Elsa sighs, and picks up the needle.

_“The Mariner_ isn’t a magazine,” is the first thing Edward Little says to him. “I mean, it is, but Francis prefers to call it a ‘fancy newspaper.’”

“What’s a fancy newspaper?” are the first words Tom speaks to Edward.

Edward takes a sip of his coffee and leans back in his desk chair, cradling the cup between his palms. The corner of his mouth quirks up.

“A magazine,” he whispers. It’s the first time Tom is given one of Edward’s precious smiles, and he can’t help but smile back. “Come on, let’s go meet everyone.”

Edward claps his free hand on his shoulder as he walks behind him with his empty coffee mug in hand.

“You know Eddie Hoar already,” he says, pointing towards the secretary who has his feet propped up on his desk as he shrinks the security camera feed and opens up The Sims.

“He thinks we don’t know,” Edward whispers. He places a hand on Tom’s back to direct him towards the corner of the room.

The next stop is the coffee pot. A drop of coffee drips onto the heating plate when Edward refills his cup. It hisses and turns to steam. Tom clenches his jaw until Edward replaces the coffee pot.

“Don’t let him pressure you into the coffee! He has a problem!” the blond man with the desk opposite Tom’s says. Edward takes this as an opportunity to approach.

“This is George.”

“Hullo,” George says. He stands and extends a hand. His handshake is loose and reminds Tom of a cloud. Everything about him reminds Tom of a cloud. His pale hair, his light blue eyes, the beige cardigan he wears. He looks like he might blow away in the wind like an empty plastic bag.

“He’s the other staff writer.”

George slaps a hand against his chest, over his heart. “You wound me, Edward! I’m a _journalist._ ”

Edward has a fond look on his face when he shakes his head and touches Tom on the arm to guide him back towards the kitchen nook with the coffee maker and the table.

“John Irving’s desk,” he points out. There are no less than seven calculators arranged by size across the desk. “He starts late, does the accounts. Nice guy. Quiet. Religious, but not aggressive about it.”

Edward watches him curiously, like he’s gauging Tom’s reaction. Tom just nods. He doesn’t have anything to say.

Edward continues, walking around the edge of the room. It’s decorated with framed covers of _The Mariner_ dating from 1966. Tom didn’t know there were so many boating events in Britain.

The desks—Tom’s, Edward’s, George’s, and one that looks unoccupied—are pushed together in the middle of the room with their elaborate computer setups acting as a barricade. Edward’s setup is different, Tom notices. His computer is on the opposite side.

“Are you left-handed?” he asks.

Edward blinks. “I am.”

“Your computer,” Tom explains. It leaves the side of his wrap-around desk empty where it’s joined to Tom’s. An image flashes in his mind; he sees himself reaching across the empty desktop to graze Edward’s fingertips with his own.

 _No,_ he thinks. He banishes the thought before it has time to settle.

“Francis’s office,” Edward is saying, nodding at the first door set into the wall, “and Mr. Blanky’s office. If there’s nothing to do we have a board game cabinet under the sink. You’ll get to work with all of us eventually, but for now,” he continues, and Tom must be imagining the way his eyes linger on his lips, “you will be working with me.”

“What do you do all day, then?” Elsa asks a week later when Tom comes home late.

There was a line closure on his usual tube ride home, but it’s not the question he was asked.

“Layouts for the magazine,” he says, hanging up his jacket. The pocket is ripped through. Fallen coins jingle inside the lining like lucky charms. “Photo editing. There’s a lot of organizing events for me and the writers to attend, actually.”

“People who write stories about boats?” She raises an eyebrow. “This job is going to last?”

Tom nods, even though he had no idea.

Elsa purses her lips, but nods. Tom almost smiles.

“That’s what you said about the last one,” she sighs, and Tom no longer feels like smiling.

* * *

_Years ago._

It starts with a wedding.

Or rather, it starts with a funeral that Edward Little does not attend. But that was twelve years ago, and he’s been content to be alone ever since.

He has friends. That’s how he ends up here, sitting in the second row of the wedding between Bill Heather and his fiancée. Her friends call her Sunny, but to everyone else she is Dr. Chen. Edward doesn’t know either of them well. He’s here because notorious extrovert Solomon Tozer is afraid to be the only person in the wedding party without a date. And thus, Edward.

“You touched my brain, then you touched my heart,” the new Mr. Doctor Chen says in his vows. Sunny is the neurologist who brought Heather out of his coma. She was the first person he saw and, as he tells it, he immediately fell in love. Sunny took a bit longer to come around—they met by chance at a grocery store a year later reaching for the same bag of grapes. They reached a compromise and each paid two quid, then sat outside and ate the entire bag together.

Edward can’t make this shit up, and he’s a writer. He’s supposed to be creative. And yet, whenever he tries to write about relationships, all he can think about is the screech of tires, the drip of an IV, and a funeral that he does not attend.

Sol comes up to him after the ceremony. Thanks him for coming. Jokes about giving each other handjobs in the loo before photos. It’s been a long time. Edward almost says yes.

But then Sol is called for pictures and Edward sits and scrolls through his emails. He finds a job offer. It’s not his first choice, but it’s a magazine published by John Franklin and a brief stint as a staff writer at _The Mariner_ will look great on his CV. He’s been to the odd yacht show with his father, too, and has a decent idea of what he’ll be writing about. As the photographer begins ordering the wedding party into position, Edward accepts Mr. Crozier’s offer. It’s when he lowers the phone and slides it back into his pocket that he notices the wedding photographer has an incredible arse. He chalks it up to how horny he is after ten years of aborted second dates. He might take Tozer up on his offer. But then the photographer lowers his camera, and Edward chokes on his own saliva.

He’s gorgeous. Pale blue eyes. Dark hair that falls over his forehead with a careless innocence. Elegant fingers that twist the dials of his camera with expertise. Edward stares until Tozer notices and laughs at him, but he doesn’t care. Edward is going to commit this man’s form to memory and then furiously jerk off when he gets home, pretending it’s the photographer’s deft fingers that dive beneath the waistband of his pants and stroke him to completion.

It should bother him that he doesn’t even consider approaching the man, but it’s been years and the steady _beep beep beep_ of the heart rate monitor still echoes in his ears when he thinks about committing to anything longer than twenty minutes in the gent’s.

And, of course, he notices the wedding ring.

_Today._

“I need help.”

Edward doesn’t bother with a greeting. It’s Tozer; he’ll understand.

“Sprain your wrist wanking again, Little?” he answers.

Yes, Tozer understands.

“Not yet. Hot photographer from Heather’s wedding just got a job at my magazine.”

Tozer takes a sip of a margarita. He’s deployed somewhere in the Caribbean. Edward has no idea what the British Marines are doing in the Caribbean, but it’s been eight months since Tozer left so he must be doing _something_.

“Have you ever tried these things? Pilkington got me addicted to these stupid fruity drinks. This one’s called a Bahama Mama.”

“I need advice, not tropical drink recommendations.”

“Bro, just ask him out.” Tozer says it like it’s obvious. “If you remember Hot Photographer two years later it must be fate or some shit.”

“He’s married.”

Tozer hums in thought. “So you’re asking how to get over your crush on Hot Married Photographer while working in close proximity to him every single day?”

Edward groans. It sounds much worse out loud.

“I know you don’t want to hear it, but” --Tozer is right. Edward knows what he’s going to say and he doesn’t want to hear it-- “you should try dating again. It’s been what, fourteen years, Little? And Will was…”

“Don’t,” Edward says. The hospital smell hits him with full force. His chest aches.

“Just try, Little. I know a guy. His tour is over in a few weeks, yeah? I’ll give you his number when he’s back in town.”

Edward sighs in defeat. “Fine. What’s his name?”

“Tommy.”

Edward collapses face first into the pile of throw pillows on his couch and resigns himself to a life of lonely wanks.

* * *

George is in the middle of telling Tom about his time covering the Brexit flotilla when Francis calls him into his office.

“Thank God!” Edward says as he brushes past him on his fourth trip to the coffee maker. “I don’t know how many more times I can hear that story before I start thinking I was there.”

“You were _supposed_ to be there! You were supposed to cover me!” George shouts, and the entire office (but mostly Mr. Blanky) erupts into shouts of _dance off!_ and _felt pen sword fight!_

Once Francis’s door closes, Tom lets out a laugh. “Are felt pen sword fights the norm around here?”

“Aye, unfortunately,” Francis says, but he is laughing. “Edward’s ‘Crayola™ Purple People Eater’ knocked apart George’s ‘Uncooked Linguine Sword’ and he got the day off, not knowing it was Flotilla Day.”

Tom feels warmth spread from his belly up to his chest. It’s a nostalgic feeling, one he hasn’t felt in a long time. It takes him a long moment to realise the feeling is one of comfort.

“I like it here,” Tom says quietly.

“I hope so,” Francis answers. “But I was under a different impression.”

Tom shakes his head. “I don’t understand, sir.”

“A woman called this morning. Said she was your wife. Said something about making sure we really exist and started interrogating Mr. Hoar on your whereabouts.”

“Ah,” Tom says.

Francis patiently folds his hands on his desk. “I take it this isn’t the first time?”

Tom takes a breath and looks out Crozier’s office window. Edward and George have chosen to settle their differences by playing Scrabble at George’s desk. For a fleeting moment, Tom is glad that Eddie Hoar answered the phone instead of Edward. The word ‘secret’ comes to mind, but he refuses to acknowledge it.

“It’s hard to find steady work as a photographer,” he finally says. “She wanted to know if this could be a career. A job to raise a family on. I’ve never lied about it before; she just… worries about me.”

Francis makes a sound between a hum and a snort and pulls a bottle of lemonade out of his desk drawer.

“Ask Mr. Blanky to pull some back issues for you. Show her the quality of work we do here. Bring her in one day if you have to.”

“I’ll talk to her, sir.”

“Francis, please.” Francis nods towards the Scrabble game taking place outside. Tom turns in time to see George leap upon his desk and yell ‘orangutan.’ “This isn’t the sort of place for ‘sir’. Except Mr. Blanky. He’s a ‘sir’ if I ever knew one.”

Tom nods. “Thank you. I’ll find him now.” He stands to leave.

“And Tom?” Tom turns around, hand hovering over the doorknob.

“I’m glad to have you with us.”

“Thank you, Francis.”

He leaves early that afternoon, just in case. George and Edward are absorbed in their work. The clamour of the day’s earlier activities subsided, easing into to the click-clacking of keyboards and the occasional sigh from John Irving as he taps at his calculators.

“No one in here is a morning person,” Mr. Blanky tells him, “so most of us work late. Francis orders takeout for the office on Fridays.”

Tom nods but says, “I’m not sure my wife would take kindly to me working late.”

Blanky loads his arms with back issues of _The Mariner_ before slapping him on the shoulder. “You’re part of the team now, Tom. I won’t stop pestering you until you stay and try the curry from Diggle’s.”

“I haven’t had curry in years,” Tom admits. It feels like a concession.

He doesn’t want it to be an argument.

“My boss said you called the office today,” he says lightly. “He invited you to come and visit. See what we do. Where I work.”

Elsa is already in her scrubs. She stands in front of the microwave, watching the bowl go round. The soup begins to boil over the sides and splash up the walls of the microwave.

Tom closes his eyes and counts to ten. He hears the beep of the microwave, and the beep of the buttons Elsa pushes to set the time again. The soup hisses.

“I’m working tonight,” she says. “Can you clean this up?”

Tom says nothing. He watches the soup bubble and pop and coat the inside of the microwave with scalding liquid.

“I’m going to work,” she says.

“You haven’t eaten.” The microwave beeps. She makes no move to open it.

“I’ll pick up something on the way. I’ll be back around midnight.”

She kisses Tom on the cheek, picks up her bag, and leaves. The flat smells like burnt broth. _Vinegar is good for burns,_ he remembers his sister saying. The thought makes him feel sick. His leg aches and he hears his mother’s laugh.

He scrubs, sweeps, and polishes for hours before drawing himself a bath and collapsing bonelessly into the lukewarm water. It will be cold in a few short minutes, but he can’t bear it any hotter. He scrubs himself clean with a washcloth, taking extra care to massage his sore leg. The scar is an angry red against the pale skin of his calf. Elsa doesn’t like to see it. The memory upsets her, she says, so Tom wears long pants all through the summer months. The scar cuts a jagged diagonal line across the back of his right calf. Tom remembers the pain and Elsa calling an ambulance, and then he remembers lying to the doctor about how he cut himself trying to climb a fence. They gave him a tetanus shot and called Child Protective Services anyways. It was the burns, Elsa said. No kid burns themselves on both legs like that.

His younger siblings haven’t spoken to him since he got Mom taken away.

He wakes up when Elsa comes home that night. The door slams, and Tom’s first thought is how many more complaints from Mr. Pryor they can apologize for before they get evicted.

Elsa comes into the bedroom. The stack of _Mariners_ from Mr. Blanky sits on her end table next to one of her dolls. Its eyes look alive when headlights from the street below shine through the window. Tom is almost asleep again when the smack of the magazines hitting the floor jolts him awake.

“Do you want to fuck me?” she asks. The lights are still off. Tom wants to go back to sleep.

“I have to work in the morning.”

“So you don’t.”

Tom rubs a hand over his face. “Not really, no.”

“The new guy at work wants to.” Elsa kicks some of the magazines under the bed. “Do you still love me?”

“Yes,” Tom says. “You’re my wife. Of course I do.”

“Then why won’t you fuck me?”

This argument usually ends with a passionless twenty minutes of sex where neither of them climax. Elsa will get angry, and Tom will sleep on the couch. He just wants to go back to sleep.

“Okay,” he says. “Come here.”

“No.”

Tom rolls over, closes his eyes. He is hit in the back of the head with something sharp.

“Take your stupid magazines and get out,” she says, voice shaking. Tom feels the back of his head where the corner of a magazine connected. It is just a paper cut, but he can feel the panic rising in his belly. Without a second thought, he gathers up the magazines and his pillow and goes to sleep on the couch.

Edward is the one to notice the blood.

Tom is the first one in the office. He doesn’t sleep for more than twenty minutes at a time. Every creak of the old building makes the bile rise in the back of his throat. _She’s coming to hurt you,_ it says, but lost between dreaming and waking he doesn’t know which _she_ it is. In his dreams he is equally terrified of his wife and his mother. He leaves early and walks until his leg starts to hurt, then takes the train the rest of the way to Greenwich.

Edward shows up with a bag of coffee beans and a box of muffins about an hour after Tom.

“Hey,” he says glumly. “Sorry you have to see me like this. It takes me at least two hours and three cups of coffee to wake up properly.”

“It’s fine,” Tom says. “I don’t feel much like talking right now.”

“Muffin?”

“Please.”

“I think your head is bleeding, mate.”

Tom’s hand shoots up to the back of his head. There’s a crust of blood in his hair.

“Paper cut, if you can believe it,” he says. He fakes a laugh.

Edward snorts. “I can’t. Coffee?”

Tom doesn’t drink coffee, but he nods.

The coffee mug sits steaming on Tom’s desk as Edward pours himself a second cup, then a third cup, and then a fourth. He is beginning to perk up when Francis enters through the back door.

Francis groans. “Did I forget to lock the door again?”

Tom and Edward exchange a look. Tom laughs nervously.

“Did you hear that, Francis?” Edward whispers, eyes wide and surprise written across his face. “He giggled. In the _morning._ ”

Francis clasps his hands together. “Ah, finally! A mythical morning person! I’ll get you a key so you can open up the office next time I remember to lock it.”

Tom looks from Edward to Francis in confusion.

“George can barely button his fly in the morning, let alone navigate a key into a lock. Edward is, well,” Francis gestures to the empty coffee pot, “useless, and I won’t trust myself with anything until I’m 90 days sober.”

“Thank you,” he says as he takes the key.

“Don’t thank me yet. You two are covering the new exhibit at the Maritime Museum today.”

Edward groans and reaches for Tom’s untouched coffee mug. He raises it to his lips. When he hands it back to Tom, he has drained half the cup.

“Your coffee’s gone cold,” he says. “I’ll get you some more.”

“I can’t drink it when it’s hot,” Tom says. He waits to be teased, to be laughed at.

Instead, Edward frowns. “I’ll pick up some iced coffee for you, then?”

(He thinks about steam rising from the kettle. He thinks about the cold of an apartment with the heating shut off, and how the burn of the boiling water hurts more when he’s been wearing gloves all day to cover the red blisters that cover his hands. He thinks about how the teachers at school would exchange glances behind his back when they thought he couldn’t see but they never talked to him, never lifted a finger to help him when he could barely hold a pencil for the pain. He thinks about the school nurse, whose name he can’t remember, who rubbed his hands with ointment and gave him the privacy to cry and never told his mother.)

The new exhibition at the Maritime Museum is a collection of artefacts from the wreck of the Lusitania.

“It’s your chance to put that rant of yours into print,” Francis says as he bids them farewell.

Tom has his camera and his press pass tucked against his chest as they step out into the cloudy afternoon. The sky threatens rain, but the museum is close by.

“You have a Lusitania rant?” Tom asks.

Edward looks straight ahead but Tom can see the back of his ears colour.

“It’s nothing,” he says. “I just like history.”

“I think having a notorious ‘Lusitania rant’ puts you somewhere above ‘liking history,’ Edward.”

Edward smiles at him when they stop to cross the road. “I admit it. I’m a nerd. Is that what you want you hear?”

Impulsively, Tom raises his camera and takes a picture of Edward. The shutters click before Edward can raise a hand to block his face.

“I look terrible in photographs,” he says as Tom checks the screen.

“You really don’t,” he says. It’s true. The cloudy sky lets through the perfect amount of light to highlight Edward’s features. The sliver of teeth that shows through his crooked smile is centred perfectly. Edward leans in to see. Tom can smell his cologne. He smells warm, like when the sun warms the wet sand after the tide goes out.

“Must be the talented photographer,” Edward says. He bumps his shoulder against Tom’s as they cross the street.

“This is why I have a Lusitania rant. You can’t go to a single fucking museum without someone claiming the Lusitania is the reason the Americans joined the war. It contributed, _obviously,_ but it was the return to unrestricted submarine warfare in 1917, two years _after_ the ship sank—which was, by the way, a response to the blockade which _technically_ was a violation of international trade agreements—and,” Edward throws his hands up and tugs at the hair that falls over his ears, “ _the bloody Zimmerman telegram!_ But here we go, ignoring Mexico _again!_ ”

“His oldest sister married a Mexican diplomat,” John explains. “He was around a lot during Ed’s developmental years.”

Edward stops his furious typing and swings his desk chair around. “He called me Eduardo Pequeño for twenty years. He’s a monster.”

“It’s the literal translation of your name, Edward.”

Tom has been laughing since he took his first photograph in the museum. Edward’s rant had come out in full force as they meandered through the exhibit. It had advanced to a full tirade about “useless public history” and “patriotic populism” before Tom had declared himself finished and Edward grabbed his arm and pulled him outside into the rain.

“Dreadful,” he had said. Then he slipped off his trench coat and wrapped it around Tom’s shoulders. “For your camera,” he said. The coat was warm from Edward’s body. It smelled like him and, at a loss for how to respond, he wrapped the coat tighter around himself.

* * *

Edward’s crush on Tom Jopson eventually settles down. It’s not gone—he always finds himself watching Tom’s profile as he works. He wants to place a drop of water on the bridge of his nose and watch it slide down the perfect slope. Hell, he wants to _be_ the drop of water on his nose, just exist as a pile of hydrogens and oxygens and rest on Tom’s skin until he wipes it off, and then cling to the side of his hand, merge with the skin there, curl up within his skin cells and be part of him forever.

On second thought, his crush on Tom Jopson may not have settled down at all. But he’s not Hot Photographer anymore, he’s Tom, and it simultaneously makes things so much better and so much worse.

Hot Photographer was beautiful and unattainable. Tom is beautiful, intelligent, modest, sweet, funny, passionate, and still utterly, _utterly_ unavailable.

He gave in and wrapped his jacket around Tom’s shoulders last week. He still flushes with embarrassment when he thinks about it. _For your camera,_ he had said. It was a stupid thing to say. He might be the most awkward person in the world. And yet, he clings to the image of Tom in his jacket because it’s the closest he’ll ever get to see the most beautiful man in the world wearing his clothes.

He still feels like a massive idiot when he asks Tom out for a drink. He hasn’t asked anyone else. He doesn’t plan to. He’ll make excuses for the rest of them, and then he’ll sit at a little table in a little pub with Tom and he can pretend they’re on a date and hopefully one tiny piece of wish fulfillment will take the edge off of the horrific, all-consuming loneliness he feels every night when he comes home to an empty flat.

Tom says no.

Edward has never felt his heart break in his chest before now.

Tom looks apologetic, but it might just be pity.

“I have to get home tonight, Edward. I’m sorry. My wife—“ Tom stops. He must see the pathetic yearning on Edward’s face. “I have to get home.”

“Right. Yeah, no problem, Tom,” Edward says. He likes saying Tom’s name because it’s the only part of him he’s allowed to touch. “Maybe next time.”

* * *

Tom’s chest feels full of light when he comes to work. Board games with George and John, conversations about photography with Mr. Blanky, Eddie Hoar’s dramatic retelling of his Sims’ storylines over croissants… he never thought work could feel like this. Work is supposed to be a chore. A means to an end. But instead he gets Blanky calling him ‘son’ like he’s proud of him and George sending him memes from across the desk. Eddie started bringing in the chocolate croissants from the bakery down the road after Tom said they were his favourite. Francis calls him into his office and asks after his wife (and Tom lies, always lies because she’s miserable and the money is still disappearing and he’s too scared to ask where it’s going) at least once a week, and Edward... and Edward.

Yesterday Edward asked him out for a drink, and he said no.

Today he asks Edward out to lunch, and he says yes.

It’s not a fancy place, but it has eighteen flavours of gelato and that is more than enough for him.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t go out last night,” Tom says. It’s an easy way to start a conversation. “Did you have a good time?”

“We didn’t end up going,” Edward answers, eyes fixed on the menu. There’s a flush creeping up his neck, though the day is cold and still. “Your wife must like to have you at home.”

Tom should lie and say yes. But Edward is the first person he trusts in years so he puts the menu down and begins to tear the paper napkin into strips.

“I had to get home before her, actually. I knocked over her doll collection before I left the house.”

He neglects to mention that he, in a burst of unexpected rage, punched a porcelain doll in the head and the rest of them toppled like frilly, glassy-eyed dominoes.

“What kind of dolls? Creepy ones?”

Tom thinks about Riley’s glass eyes watching him clean the kitchen.

“Very creepy. They’re all over the flat—in the kitchen, on top of the TV, in the bedroom… always watching. I hate them.” It’s the first time he’s said it out loud and it feels like a weight is lifted off his chest.

“Christ,” Edward says. “So, did you make it home in time?”

Tom laughs. “Yeah, but it didn’t matter. I set them up wrong. Elsa noticed.”

“Caught red-handed for doll crimes, hey?”

“Sentenced to a night on the couch.”

Edward chokes on his water. “For knocking over a doll?”

Tom shrugs. He shifts in his seat and rips the strips of napkin into squares.

Edward doesn’t leave it alone. “Sleeping on the couch is when you find out your spouse has been cheating on you. Or committed a murder, or something.”

“She cares about them,” he says sharply.

“She should care more about you.”

Their waiter arrives, and they order. Tom pulls another napkin across the table and drops the shredded squares of paper into the middle, folding it into an envelope and tucking it under his fork.

“It was supposed to be a funny story,” Tom says quietly.

Edward picks up the pepper mill and rolls it over his palm. A dust of black pepper falls from the bottom of the cylinder onto his hand.

“You’re my friend, Tom,” Edward says. He looks up from the pepper mill in his hands. “I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

Tom offers a small smile. “I’m okay,” he says. He doesn’t convince himself, but he hopes it can convince Edward.

It’s a month later when his and Edward’s cover story is published in _The Mariner._

“Pub night on Friday!” Blanky exclaims. He and Edward toast each other with their coffee mugs. Edward drinks, and then offers his cup to Tom. _It’s cool enough for you to drink now,_ it means. Physically wounded by the thought of a full cup of coffee going cold, Edward had started offering Tom his lukewarm cup to share. If anyone in the office thinks it strange, they say nothing.

Then again, they all have bizarre drinking habits: Francis keeps a whisky bottle filled with iced tea in his office, George has a secret stash of room temperature kombucha in his desk drawer, and John has an addiction to banana flavoured milk-2-gos. 

George claps Tom on the back and congratulates him.

“Get the wife to lengthen your leash a little bit,” George laughs. “You’ve not come out with us before.”

“You have to,” Edward says. “We’re celebrating _you_.”

He beams at Tom, and Tom remembers what it feels like to be wrapped in Edward’s coat.

He leaves a note on the counter. _Work meeting tonight,_ it read. _Publishing stuff, might go late._

It feels like cheating, not to tell Elsa directly. But she is out, and Tom wants to go.

They’ve spent most evenings apart after Tom started work at _The Mariner_. Elsa claimed the sofa for her spot to read or knit or talk on the phone with her friends from the hospital. Tom is relegated to the bedroom. The sheets smell like her, so he takes them down to the Laundromat and washes them every Sunday. Sometimes when he leaves their flat, she looks at him like she hates him.

Most nights he talks to her. Some nights she speaks back.

 _Why are you mad at me?_ she always asks.

 _I’m not,_ he would answer. _You’re the one avoiding me._

 _I just don’t know what to do,_ she would say next. _You don’t do anything for me anymore. For us._

And then Tom would look around, at the kitchen he had cleaned, the carpet he had vacuumed, and laundry he had washed and dried and folded and put away while Elsa was out with her mate from work (the new guy who has a crush on her, who calls her Elzbieta like she hasn’t spent her whole life trying to erase the past), drinking martinis at a gentrified Shoreditch gastropub or spending her afternoons in antique stores, surrounded by glassy-eyed porcelain dolls.

 _I clean for a living,_ is her excuse. _I don’t want to do it at home._

Her housekeeping job at the hospital is harder work than Tom’s, so he takes up the duties at home without a fight. He rushes home to cook dinner before Elsa returns from her day shifts, he clears and washes the dishes, and then cleans until the only thing left is to scrub the countertop with hot water and soap.

“I can’t,” he had finally told her one night.

“Why are you so afraid of hot water?” she had said. Her mouth was twisted and not at all like the worried frown she had worn when she saw the violent red scalds on his legs all those years ago.

“You know why,” he whispered. “Just this one thing, Elsa. Please.”

“I can’t take care of you forever,” she sighed. “One day I’ll hold your hand under the hot water until you grow up and get over it.”

* * *

Edward almost blows off Pub Night.

“I look stupid. I’m not wearing the suit,” he tells Tozer. Tozer is sitting on his bed wearing the most hideous grey track suit that has ever been manufactured. It makes Edward less inclined to heed his fashion advice.

“It makes your arse look good.”

“I don’t need my arse to look good.”

“No, but you want it to.”

Right. Tozer is over because he knows Edward far too well to be anything but a nuisance. A nuisance who will get him out of his flat for his first social engagement in three months.

“Look hot and seduce Hot Photographer into a steamy gay affair,” Tozer says, stretching out on Edward’s bed. He hates that Tozer is the only other person to have slept in that bed, back when they spent a stupid amount of money on beer but were too cheap to pay for a cab to take Tozer home.

“I have morals, Tozer.”

“Your dick doesn’t.”

Edward grips his sideburns in exasperation and shrugs off the linen jacket. It ends up thrown over Tozer’s face as Edward crashes face down next to him.

His voice is muffled by the pillow when he says, “His name is Tom. He’s amazing. I think I’m falling in love with him.”

“Shit,” Tozer sympathises. “The heart speaks louder than the dick.”

Edward rubs his face into the pillowcase. Maybe he’ll spontaneously combust and he won’t have to deal with anything anymore. He can die without trying to seduce a married man because he’s a sad, fucked up loser who can’t make it to a second date and then goes and falls in love with the most unattainable person he knows.

“Tell me I’ll get over it,” he asks, defeated.

Tozer sits up and straddles him. He looks like a soft boulder.

“Let the heart speak louder, Eduardo Pequeño.”

Edward pushes him off the bed.

From the ground, Tozer wheezes, “Just try to be his friend, man. It’ll pass.”

* * *

Tom doesn’t realize that Edward Little is handsome until he walks into the pub in a linen suit that would look ridiculous on anyone else coming in out of the February gloom. He runs a hand through his hair. The snowflakes that glitter like a halo around his head are shaken away, and a drop of melted snow lands on Tom’s sleeve. He looks at the spot where the water soaks in, a dark pinprick against his tweed blazer, and wonders if it will soak through to his skin. He wants it to. He wants to feel it.

Edward is talking to him now. Something about the article, maybe, but the blood pumping in Tom’s ears is so loud that he can’t hear a word. He traces the lines of Edward’s face with his eyes instead, eyes raking down the length of his straight nose to focus on the way his mouth moves when he speaks. The movement is hypnotic. Tom tears his eyes away before Edward can notice.

He wonders if he noticed. He wonders what would happen if he noticed. He doesn’t let himself wonder what would happen if he noticed Tom back.

Tom twists the wedding ring on his finger and accepts Edward’s congratulations with a smile and a nod.

It’s a flurry of congratulations from people he doesn’t know. One of them, a beautiful blonde woman in a black jumpsuit, kisses his cheek and tells him she’s so glad he chose Francis. She sits next to him at the table, then leans over and kisses Francis on her other side. Her wedding ring is simple and elegant; a single cushion cut diamond on a band of white gold that sits comfortably on her small hand.

“Tom, you’ve met Sophy?” Francis leans forward to speak to Tom. Tom nods. Sophy Crozier extends a hand anyways and shakes his firmly.

A round of drinks is slid across the scuffed wooden table. Someone miscounted and ordered one for Francis.

Francis looks at his with something akin to longing. Sophy squeezes his thigh under the table. Tom sees her hand move back to her lap, and Francis clears his throat.

“Who’s up for an extra?”

“Age before beauty!” Blanky roars, clapping Francis on the back and reaching for the mug.

Sophia leans forward and swats his hand away. “Wasn’t it you who said a man only truly grows up once he’s married? Let the boys make their case.”

“I’ve been married for ages!” Blanky complains, but Francis shakes his head like a disappointed father.

“Divorcing Esther and then remarrying her resets the counter,” he says. “Edward?”

Edward throws his hands up in defeat. “Still single,” he says not unhappily, and Tom can feel something inside his belly twist.

“Two years,” George says. He reaches for his wallet to pull out a photo of his squashy-faced baby they have all seen so many times before. They all lean forward to coo over his potato-shaped daughter anyways.

“John?” Edward nudges the accountant. “Finally going to tell us about your mystery girl?”

“Or boy,” Blanky adds. John’s face pales.

“How did you—wait, did I—how?” he stutters.

“How did we know that you’ve started seeing someone?” Edward asks. “You smile more at your phone than at your calculator.”

John looks around and leans in. “How did you know it was a man?” he whispers.

Blanky looks stunned for a moment. “Son, it’s the 21st century.”

Sophia comes to his rescue: “Not married! Thomas?”

Tom twists the wedding ring on his finger. “Twelve years,” he says.

“Twelve!? You’ve only just turned sixteen, haven’t you?” Blanky laughs.

“Funny,” Tom says quietly. “We married young.”

“Do you regret it?” Edward asks him. It’s quiet, private. As soon as the words leave his mouth Tom can tell he regrets them.

“I don’t think I’d know who I am without her,” he answers. The words sound more romantic out loud than the echoes of _you’re no one, and you never will be_ and _maybe your mother was right about you_ that rattle around behind his eyes.

The subject is dropped when John begins to wave maniacally at the door where a sandy-haired young man stands, scanning the tables.

“Oho!” George says, leaping up and dragging an extra chair up next to John. “This is him?”

The sandy-haired man waves shyly and weaves between tables to reach the corner where they sit. The extra pint is pushed towards him.

“Hi,” he says. “I’m Tommy.”

John’s attempt to tame his smile into something becoming of an accountant is abandoned when Tommy sits down in the chair next to him and kisses him lightly. He flushes red and stares at his lap as the grin spreads across his face.

Tom reaches across to shake Tommy’s hand. “I’m also Tom,” he says.

“Me too,” Blanky reaches across the table. “So, how did you two meet? Church?”

Tommy snorts, and John shifts uncomfortably in his chair.

“He seduced me at me pa’s funeral.”

As shouts of disbelief and laughter ring out among the table, Sophy leans towards Tom so he can hear her say: “I saw the work you did for the Ross Aviation Museum.”

“Really?” He suspects she looked him up before coming to the pub, but he accepts the easy conversation starter. Everyone else is fawning over John and Tommy being the “cutest couple” and Tom doesn’t know what to say. Something in their casual intimacy makes him feel deeply uncomfortable.

“Yes! Everything you shoot is so dynamic. Francis just barely pried you away from James’s magazine.”

This is the first Tom has heard of any of this.

“When you showed up to the interview, Francis was so relieved. He thought you wouldn’t want to tie yourself down to an ongoing publication, especially after you turned down Fitzjames, which—“ she lowers her voice so she can barely be heard over the conversation surrounding them, “—would probably pay better _and_ has a new investment from Franklin. We are so lucky to have you on board, Tom.”

“Thanks,” he manages to say before excusing himself.

He stands in front of the mirror, focussing on his face, his hair, his eyes. He wonders if there’s something wrong with him that he can’t see, something Elsa is protecting him from. He wonders if he’s as good a photographer as Sophy seemed to imply, or if she was just flattering him.

He feels like crying.

The door opens, closes. He’s still staring into his eyes, trying to see what other people see, but he just sees himself.

Edward appears in the mirror next to him, washing his hands.

“You okay in there?” he asks. His eyes are fixed on the reflection of Tom’s eyes in the mirror.

“I think I’m going crazy,” he answers.

“Care to share?”

“Sophy Crozier just informed me that I turned down a job offer from a man named Fitzjames.”

“You’re right,” Edward says. “You must be crazy to do that. Don’t get me wrong, I’m loyal to Francis and always will be, but Fitzjames is… something else.”

“I don’t remember it happening. How could I have turned it down if I’ve never heard of the man?

Edward shrugs. “Maybe you’re drunk.” He pauses to reconsider. “Or not drunk enough.”

Tom watches Edward’s reflection as he bends down and splashes his face with cold water. The twisting in his stomach returns.

“You know, I don’t think that’s it,” he says once Edward surfaces and pats his face dry with a paper towel.

“Neither do I,” Edward answers before his face breaks into his rare crooked smile, “but it’s worth a try.”

Tom comes home late embraced by the pleasant fog of one too many drinks and a night spent in good company. He whistles as he unlocks the door. The lights are off. When he flicks the switch, he finds his pillow and a pile of blankets waiting for him on the couch, and the door to his bedroom firmly shut.


	2. II.

Tozer calls him a week later to ask if he’s gotten laid.

“No,” Edward says shortly.

“Don’t you want to?”

“No.” The answer is just as short. He’s not interested in the generically handsome army men Tozer throws at him.

“Tommy’s back in town. Conveniently has the same name as your photographer lad!”

“No,” he says finally.

“Come on, man! Look, he’s got a bit of a crush on me and I want to get him off my back, so to speak.”

“Why don’t you tell him you’re seeing someone?”

A sound of revelation comes through the phone.

“You’re a genius, Ed. A lonely, depressed son of a bitch, but a genius.”

“I live in fear of what I’ve wrought.”

Tozer hangs up the phone, and Edward pulls the duvet back over his head and goes back to sleep.

He wakes up a couple hours later. It’s almost seven in the evening. He should be hungry by now. He hasn’t eaten since hauling himself out of bed at eleven for a cup of coffee and a pair of frozen pancakes.

Instead, he brushes his teeth and goes back to bed.

* * *

The train rattles along its track back to London and Tom misses the sea already. He had accompanied George to interview the head of an independent restoration practice in Margate, and after the interview was talked into ice cream on the beach. It was windy; they both swallowed mouthfuls of sand before abandoning their sandy cones and finding a small shop in the town where they could sit out of the wind and enjoy.

Surprisingly, chatting with George is easy. He’s the type of man Tom has always envied; one who can turn something as inconsequential as a beetle on the pavement into an hour long conversation. His conversation flits all over the map, and it isn’t long until they’re an hour out of the city and George mentions Edward.

“He’s a funny sort, really.”

Tom waits for him to elaborate, confident that he will.

“I dropped by one Sunday to ask if he wanted to go round the pub, watch the game, you know. He said I woke him up! It was four o’clock! He was all dishevelled, dark circles under the eyes, all that jazz. So I asked him if he had a late night and he laughed, sort of—you know that little laugh he does that’s almost a scoff, but more polite?”

Tom knows. He thinks about it a lot.

“He’s entirely different at work. Maybe it’s all the coffee? Or maybe he really embraces the bohemian artist lifestyle, working miserably at home on the next great English novel.”

“I wouldn’t say he’s miserable,” Tom says.

“Oh, no. Not in front of you. I don’t think he wants you to know how despondent he gets.”

“That doesn’t make any sense, George. I’m just—“

“Oh! You should read his novel! Truly miserable.”

“His novel?”

George pulls out his phone and taps the screen a few times. He shows it to Tom.

“The Basement Stairs?” The cover of the novel is a wooden door, cracked open with worn wooden steps leading down into the dark. “It looks like a horror novel.”

“Ah, it’s about an emotional basement rather than a bizarre torture basement, unfortunately.”

Tom laughs, hoping it was a joke. It’s always hard to tell with George.

“I can lend it to you, if you’d like?”

It feels a bit like an invasion of privacy, to read someone’s novel without their knowing. But Tom’s curiosity has never been allowed to manifest before now, and he says yes.

George was right. Edward’s novel is miserable.

Elsa comes home when he’s about halfway through it; the protagonist has just wound up locked in their partner’s basement (there is, in fact, a physical basement involved; George clearly hasn’t read it) to prevent them leaving, and Tom is rapt. He hasn’t been this engrossed in a novel since he was a teenager. The slam of the front door startles him and he loses his page.

“Oh, what are you reading?” Elsa puts her bag down on the counter and comes to sit with him. Her scrubs smell like the hospital.

“My coworker wrote a novel,” he explains.

“What’s it about?” She rests her head on his shoulder.

“Loneliness.”

“That’s a vague description.”

He thought ‘loneliness’ nailed the themes pretty well. “It’s about the main character throwing himself into a relationship and losing himself as an individual.”

Elsa snorts. “Your friend clearly hasn’t been married before.” She stands, pats his shoulder once, and walks away, leaving Tom to wonder what she meant.

It’s spring when Tom receives a phone call from an unknown number.

“Tom! Hi! It’s Sophy Crozier.”

“Oh,” Tom says in surprise. He wonders why she’s calling.

“I wondered if you fancied lunch today?”

“Of course,” he says. He barely refrains from addressing her as ma’am.

“Wonderful!” He can hear the smile in her voice. “I’ll come round the office and we can decide where to go.”

Tom hangs up, just as confused as he was before.

He knocks on Francis’s door after a lengthy internal debate about what to do.

“Your wife invited me out to lunch today,” he says.

Francis nods expectantly. When Tom does not continue, he raises an eyebrow.

“And?”

“It’s okay?”

“It’s about bloody time is what it is. She’s been going on about you for months. Wants to talk about cameras, or something.”

_Is that normal?_ he wants to ask, but he’s starting to think that maybe he’s the abnormal one. Everyone else seems to be able to drink hot coffee without going into a panic, or go to the pub without their spouse and not fight about it for days after. Maybe going for lunch with a married woman is normal.

Lunch with Sophy is anything but normal.

For one, she encourages him to go on about shot composition and apertures for far longer than anyone ever has before. Second, she seems to enjoy it and continues to add anecdotes of her own experiences with sports photography before she started working in publishing.

Talking to her over a plate of tacos is the most natural thing in the world, and it scares him. But with her, it’s easy to push the fear aside and relax into the easy conversation. Before long he is finishing his fourth glass of water and Sophy is pulling out her wallet.

“Please, let me,” she says. She places a credit card over the bill and slides it to the edge of the table. It’s a normal credit card; the same one Tom has in his wallet. He expected something fancy—something black or gold, maybe, or maybe a stack of hundred pound notes—but Sophy, despite the royal way she carries herself, is the most relatable person Tom has met in his entire life.

It becomes a regular Tuesday. Sophy comes by, hands Francis a latte, and she and Tom head out to find the best Taco Tuesday patio special south of the river.

They don’t run out of things to talk about. First it’s photography, and then it is cinematography, then films and books and art. It takes three weeks of colourful conversation until Sophy remembers to ask about James Fitzjames.

“I told Edward,” Tom smiles fondly, “when we were in the loo at the pub that night. I’ve never heard of him before you brought his magazine up in conversation. I never received a call, or an email, or a letter. I think I’d remember if _Erebus and Explorer_ contacted me.”

Sophy looks concerned when he says this. He wonders if the leaping of his heart was visible when he said Edward’s name.

“But he did call, Tom. I was there when James called. He spoke to someone on the phone.”

“Maybe it was a wrong number.” There’s nothing he can do now, anyways. Even if there was, he wouldn’t quit _The Mariner_. He says as much.

“Yes, Francis does have a talent for instilling a sense of loyalty.” She laughs. It’s a light, happy sound. It does not remind him of his mother.

“He’s been very good to me.”

“I’m certain your other coworkers are good to you as well?” She wears a sly smile. Tom’s stomach drops like he’s swallowed a rock.

“They’re great,” he says, trying not to think about Edward’s lips on his coffee cup or Edward’s hands on his keyboard or Edward’s legs in the dark wash jeans he wears on Fridays. He fails, and he drops his eyes to the half-finished taco in front of him.

“Still, it would be nice to know why we couldn’t contact you directly. Ann Ross said you turned her down as well.”

“I’m sorry?”

The Ross Aviation Museum had hired him to redesign their website for their re-launch two years ago, and he stayed to photograph the grand reopening party. Ann spoke to him at the party and took one of his business cards. He never heard from her.

“Ann Ross wanted you as well, Tom. Do you need a new phone? This one’s getting on a bit, isn’t it?” She flicks the edge of his phone where it sits on the corner of the table. It’s outdated, but it works fine. It has always worked fine.

“I don’t think it’s the phone,” he says. His mouth is dry.

“Oh?” Sophy’s eyes narrow, head tilted.

“I have an idea.” He thinks about all the times he’s gone out to the grocery store or the pharmacy and finds that he’s taken Elsa’s phone instead of his own. They’re the same model—an easy mistake. But it happened, again and again even though he started making a point to leave his phone on the ledge near the door every time he came home. Elsa only looked at him with concern when he brought it up, like he was losing his mind. He stopped mentioning it, waiting to see if she would mention missing calls from her mates at work. She never did.

“It’s probably nothing,” he says, mostly to himself. He’s being paranoid, he thinks, even as he opens his email app to make sure it’s the right phone.

They go to the café across the street from the office the next week.

“I’m sorry I’ve been acting so strangely,” Sophy says. It’s true—in the few minutes they spent waiting for the light to change to cross the street, Sophy has looked behind them three times, each time scanning the sidewalks as if looking for someone.

She continues when they seat themselves at the corner table, far from the door. “I don’t like being out alone when Francis is gone. He’s—we’ve been getting notes, slipped under our door for the past year. Threatening to hurt him. And me.”

Tom doesn’t know how to react. He wants to protect her, shield her petite frame from danger and keep her safe. He wants to invite her to stay with him while Francis is away—he’s gone until Friday with Blanky at a convention somewhere in Canada—but of course there’s no room and he doubts Elsa would take kindly to him inviting another woman to stay without her permission. She would never agree to it.

“Would you walk me home later? I’ll pay for the Uber back to yours, I promise.”

“You don’t have to do that,” Tom says.

Sophy insists.

“Do you have any idea who would threaten you?” It seems like the requisite question to ask.

To his surprise, she laughs. “I’ll tell you my story, but you have to tell me about your phone mystery first.”

Tom’s neck goes warm. “It’s not a mystery,” he insists, but Sophy is shaking her head and ordering a refill of both of their drinks.

“We’re friends, Tom. You can tell me whatever is on your mind and I won’t think any less of you for it.”

“Is that how it works?”

“It is with me.”

Tom looks around. The only person nearby is a guy in a Fire Department t-shirt with biceps the size of Tom’s thigh. He’s reading a newspaper and has ear buds jammed into his ears.

“I think Elsa was switching our phones and screening my calls.”

Sophy’s hands still on her coffee mug. She leans in. The pendant of her necklace drops away from her skin and dangles over her collarbone. Tom watches it swing.

“Tom—“ she starts, but she is cut off.

“It was probably an accident. Or paranoia. Or—“

This time, Sophy cuts him off sternly. “Tom! Stop. Just—would she do that?”

“She doesn’t like me working here.” It feels nice to talk to someone. Now that he’s started, he can’t stop. The guilt eats away inside him, but the words pour out of his mouth.

“Things were supposed to be better. Two incomes should mean less stress about money, but Elsa is still the one who pays the bills and pays the rent and I don’t know where my money is going because the debt keeps getting bigger and—“ he takes a deep, shaky breath, “—she tried to start selling my camera equipment to pay it off.”

Sophy snorts. Even when she snorts it sounds dignified. “But that’s your job. You’re a photographer.”

“She’d rather I wasn’t.”

“Why?”

Tom shrugs. If he knew the answer he wouldn’t be sleeping on the couch for weeks at a time.

“You need to talk to her. If you ask me, she’s acting downright ab—“

“I’ll talk to her.”

“Forgive me if it’s too much, but I know a marriage counsellor. She really helped with Francis and I. We still go in. Needing outside guidance isn’t shameful, you know.”

Tom tries to imagine him and Elsa talking to a therapist.

“I think we’re past that point now,” he admits. “It’s been what, four months? Four months since we last kissed, even. I’ve been on the couch for most of it.” He laughs, runs a hand through his hair.

And then Sophy looks out the window, distracted, and says the strangest thing: “Does Edward know?”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. He just—he’s happier now that you’re around.”

He’s still thinking about what she meant when he walks her home that evening. The sun is still shining, the streets still filled with vehicles and pedestrians.

“I suppose I owe you a story,” Sophy says. She doesn’t wait for an answer.

“A couple years ago, when _The Mariner_ and _Erebus & Explorer _were still the same publication, Francis refused to hire a man. He went by his initials, E.C., when he wrote. He was a fine writer, but nothing special. Francis hired George over him. Then he applied again when Fitzjames splintered off with half the staff. This time, Francis hired Edward over him. He was found with an improvised bomb in the elevator a week later, and then the letters started coming to the house. He hasn’t done anything beyond putting a couple of bricks put through windows and leaving a few delightful piles of excrement on the porch, but he knows me, and it _scares me._ ”

“I think you’re right to be afraid, Sophy. A broken window…” Broken windows used to mean finding the courage to tell his teacher that his family couldn’t afford to send him to school with lunch because the mean-faced man was angry with his mother and put another rock through the window. Now, a broken window means another bitter fight about money and another week on the couch.

“Thank you. I’m always worried I’m overreacting. I must be a terrible example of a woman, to be afraid without my husband to protect me.” She laughs, places a light hand on Thomas’s arm.

“Not at all,” he says. “I think you’re a perfect woman.”

Sophy laughs again. “Oh, Thomas,” she says. “You’re lovely.”

* * *

It’s Wednesday. There’s a rugby match on the telly tonight. Edward is going to finish work, go home, drink a beer, and watch the game. Maybe he’ll call Tozer and see if he’s back from wherever yet. It makes sense. He’s had Wednesdays like this before.

“Did you want to go out after work?” The words erupt from his mouth before he can think about what he’s saying. Tom is sitting at his desk, twirling a pencil with his head propped up on a hand. He’s staring at the screensaver. It’s a classic from the nineties: Pipes. Edward remembers sitting in the front of the computer for hours with Hattie and James watching the pipes weave their way across the black monitor. They would guess which colour pipes would appear next; the winner got a candy. He’d like to watch Pipes with Tom. Hell, he’d like to watch paint dry with Tom, but there’s no way he could ever do that if he keeps making an arse of himself. Frantically, he tries to backtrack, play it cool.

“You know, we can discuss things. Normal things.”

Edward bites his lip and wishes that a bolt of lightning will manifest in the sky and strike him down. Death is the only cure for his stupid brain and his stupid mouth but somehow Tom is smiling and nodding— _eagerly,_ almost—and he takes it back. Maybe the lightning could only strike him a little bit, and he could end up in the hospital and Tom could bring him flowers and he can pretend they mean something more than they do.

“Gelato?” Tom suggests. “Sophy and I found a place that does tacos and gelato, which is a weird combination so we only had the tacos but they had ten flavours _at least_ , which is neat.”

Edward nods. Tries not to stare at Tom’s ridiculously handsome face. Notices the dark shadows under his eyes and wants to take him home, tuck him into his own bed because it’s big and soft and let him sleep for hours and maybe, in another life, Tom would say the bed is too big and lonely because he’s used to sharing with someone and Edward could slide in next to him and lay awake, flat on his back, because he’s afraid that he’s going to do something stupid. But this is a fantasy of another life, so he imagines that he falls asleep anyways and wakes up with Tom in his arms, hair tickling his nose as he wakes up slowly to find Tom already awake, sleepy and pliant and turning around to face him and he will reach out, brush the hair out of Tom’s eyes, run a gentle thumb over his cheek, right below where the dark bruise of exhaustion has since disappeared, and then Tom will kiss him.

He doesn’t want anything more.

(A lie. He does, but he’ll settle for one kiss. He can’t die without knowing what Tom’s mouth feels like under his own.)

These thoughts descend on his brain like a plague of locusts and are gone within a second, leaving only the bare frame of his traitorous brain.

“Sounds… neat,” he says.

They’re about to leave when Sophy shows up at the office.

“Hi, Tom,” she says. She’s dressed casually today, in light wash denim and a leather jacket. “Any chance of another walk home?” She presses her lips together in apology when she sees Tom and Edward already dressed in their outerwear.

“Oh, Sophy, I forgot. I’m sorry, Edward, I promised I’d take Sophy home and—“

“It’s fine, Tom. I’ll ask John! You two go ahead and head out and I’ll just—“

John emerges from Blanky’s office with a stack of files. “I heard my name?”

“I was wondering if you could walk me home? It’s close, I swear, it’s just…”

“E.C.,” John says. “Yes, of course. I’ll just be a moment, Mrs. Crozier.”

Tom frowns. The lines that crease his forehead deepen, and Edward wants to touch each line with the very tips of his fingers.

“I’m so sorry Sophy,” he says, and he looks so broken up about it that Edward wants to hug him. “And John, I’m sorry to inconvenience you like this.”

“It’s not a problem, Thomas,” John says. “Tommy works tonight and I—“ he cuts himself off, turning pink around the ears.

Tom shifts and turns away. “Shall we?” he says to Edward, as if Edward won’t follow him anywhere he asks him to go.

Once it’s just the two of them, Edward’s brain begins to behave again.

“You really love coffee, huh?” Tom says, eyeing Edward’s coffee gelato.

Edward shrugs. He’s a bit embarrassed, but he can’t pinpoint why. Tom is, after all, eating a bowl of strawberry ice cream, which he shamelessly ordered with rainbow sprinkles.

“The rainbow sprinkles taste best,” he says when he catches Edward looking. Edward pretends it was the sprinkles he was looking at, and not the way Tom’s elegant fingers hold the red plastic spoon and the roll of his lips over its curve.

“John and Tommy seem happy,” Tom says once they’re seated. It’s raining again; a typical London drizzle that hangs in the air like a wet fog.

“Good for them,” Edward says.

“I don’t think I ever had a ‘honeymoon phase.’ Getting together with Elsa was an inevitability that just… happened.”

Edward thinks back to when they first met Tommy Hartnell. It feels like forever ago. “I think they’re past the ‘honeymoon phase,’” he says. “I think they’re just in love.”

Tom frowns, and twists his wedding ring.

“I wish—“ he starts, then stops. Edward desperately wants to know what he wishes. He makes an encouraging sound.

“I wonder if there’s something wrong with me,” Tom says suddenly. “Everyone around me is so bloody happy all the time. John and Tommy, Francis and Sophy, George…”

“George has the personality of an animated garden gnome.”

Tom laughs harder than Edward had ever heard him laugh. He wants to make him laugh like this all the time.

“You’re forgetting your best mate Ed “Clinical Depression” Little,” he says.

“You seem to be getting by,” Tom says, and it feels like a compliment. He decides now is not the best time to tell him about his 48 hour depression nap last weekend.

“I had a 48-hour depression nap last weekend,” he says anyways.

“Oh,” Tom says. He looks concerned. And then: “Is there anything I can do to help?”

Edward shakes his head. “It comes and goes. I’ll be fine for a while now, I think.”

“I’m glad,” Tom says quietly.

“What about you?”

“Me?”

“Are you unhappy?”

Tom looks down at his gelato. It’s melting; a pink, rainbow-dotted iceberg sits in an ocean of pink sludge. He presses the flat of his spoon on the tip of the strawberry berg. It squishes down until it’s under the lagoon of rosy gelato-runoff.

Then he looks at Edward and says “not always” and smiles and Ed feels like his heart is Tom’s ice cream, melting into a pink viscous soup. He hopes Tom will slurp it up.

(The metaphor has become decidedly un-sexy. He doesn’t care, though, because his heart _hurts_ when he looks at Tom’s face. He’s a bad, bad person to even entertain the thought of trying to seduce Tom away from his wife but it keeps coming back: images of them together, happy and in love, eating dinner and taking walks and holding hands in Waitrose. But Edward Little is a coward hiding behind a delicate moral shield that will shatter with a single look.)

Movement brings Edward back; Tom is checking his watch. “Shall we?” Tom asks. He glances down at his watch again. He does that: looks at his watch, says he should go, then double-checks to make sure he has the time right.

Edward stands and shrugs his coat on. “I can give you a ride?”

Tom raises an eyebrow. “I live on the other side of the city.”

“Yes,” Edward says. “And?”

Tom looks down, smiles at his shoes. “Thanks, but I’ll be fine on the tube. You go ahead and drive the whole five minutes to yours.”

“It’s _seven_ minutes, thank you very much.” He holds the door for Tom when they leave the building. “Text me when you get home, yeah?”

“Everyone keeps saying that.”

“Please, ease your Mom-Friend Ed’s mind,” he says, falling back on the easy sense of humour he uses with Sol. It’s not hard—he worries. He worries about everyone. He nearly invited himself along to the hospital when George’s baby was born.

“You’re not a ‘Mom-Friend,’ Edward,” Tom laughs. “I’m not complaining, anyways. It’s nice to know you’re thinking of me.”

If he were anyone but Edward Little, he would say something charming. _I think about you all the time,_ maybe, or _I haven’t stopped thinking of you since the day I met you_. But he just knocks his shoulder against Tom’s as they walk to the station and wishes things were easier.

* * *

Tom closes the door behind him, cushioning it with his foot so it eases quietly shut. He knows Mr. Pryor is listening, waiting for an excuse to file another complaint with the landlord. He digs his phone out of his pocket, sends off a text to Edward before he can second guess what he wrote.

“Who are you texting?” Elsa asks from the couch.

Tom closes his eyes and takes a breath. “Friend from work. Edward.” She nods, returns to stitching something. A pair of doll trousers, maybe. Tom curls up on the couch, back against the arm of the sofa. He’s tired, suddenly, and thinks that the sugar rush from the ice cream has worn off. He fishes the phone out of his pocket when he feels it vibrate; its Edward. He’s sent him a smiley face emoji. Tom smiles, and rests his head against the cushy back of the couch. He falls asleep with his phone at his feet and a smile on his face.

He’s woken up suddenly by Elsa’s insistent prodding.

“Who’s Sophy?” she asks.

“Huh?” He’s groggy; he can’t have been asleep for more than half an hour but he feels like he’s been shaken out of a deep sleep.

“Sophy. Sophy who has just texted you ‘Tom, come quick. I need you.’.”

He’s suddenly very awake. He makes to grab at his phone, but Elsa holds it out of his reach.

“She’s a friend, Elsa! She wouldn’t be asking if it wasn’t important. Just let me call her, ok?”

Elsa looks him in the eye, and presses the call button. It’s answered almost immediately.

Tom can hear the quiet, tinny sound of Sophy’s voice, frantic on the line.

“This is Tom’s wife,” Elsa says. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing, but he’s—“

Tom acts without thinking. He pounces, knocking the phone from his wife’s hand and scrambling after it when it hits the floor.

“Sophy? What’s going on?”

“Tom! Thank God, it’s John. He’s—oh God, he’s been stabbed. We were walking home and a man came up to us—I know it was him, Tom—it was E.C. and he had a knife, and then—“

“Are you hurt?” he asks. He looks anywhere but at Elsa’s face.

“No, I don’t think so—John pushed me away and I fell into a flowerbed. I’m okay. He’s on his way to the hospital and I just—“

“I’ll call Edward. He’s closer.”

“Yes, thank you.” A pause. “Will you still come? I don’t want to cause you any trouble, but I’d… I’d feel safer if you were here.”

“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” he says. He stands and walks to the bedroom. He’s had a packed bag hidden away since he was ten years old—he and Kate hid their suitcases in the oven because they knew Mommy never touched it—and he’s always felt guilty about it, like he’s ready to run out like his father. Today he’s thankful.

He hangs up and opens his messages with Edward. The smiley face stares at him, innocent and unblinking.

“Tom.”

Elsa stands in the doorway. Her hands are clenched into fists where they rest against the doorframe.

“My friend is hurt. I need to go.”

“No. You’re staying here and you’re telling me exactly who Sophy is and what you’ve done with her.”

“She’s my boss’s wife. She’s my friend. Please, I need to go.” Tom pushes past her to get to the front door. He slides his shoes on.

“Thomas Jopson, don’t you _dare_ walk out that door,” Elsa yells at him from the hall. He picks up his bag and is out the door before she can catch up to him.

* * *

The smell of the hospital makes him feel sick. It’s been years—too many years to be this affected by it, surely—since Will died but Edward still cringes at the beeping of the IV alarms. A phantom pain in his left arm reminds him of where the needle sat, blood passing through it slowly. He rubs at it absentmindedly and goes to find John.

John is awake. There is no beeping in his room.

“I can’t believe you got stabbed,” he says by way of greeting.

“I can,” John grimaces. He gently pats the heavy bandage covering his side.

“Was it--?” Edward stops.

John nods. “E.C.. I met him once. When he had the bomb strapped to himself. He—“ John blushes and shakes his head. “Well, he was easy to recognize. Is Sophy okay?”

Edward nods. “She’s with Jopson.”

“He has a very calming presence, doesn’t he?”

Edward snorts. His heart beats twice as fast when Tom is in the room.

“Huh,” John says. He nods slowly like he does when he solves a difficult algebraic equation.

“What?”

“I won’t tell anyone, Edward.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, John.”

John laughs lightly, then grabs at his side. “Ouch. You’re not subtle, Edward. It’s a good thing everyone we work with is just as oblivious as you.”

“I’m not in love with him.”

John just shakes his head and reaches for his cup of apple juice.

* * *

Tom’s phone died after the tenth text message from Elsa last night.

_Come home right now,_ it said, but he ignored it. Sophy had hung up the phone in tears and dragged him into the basement where a full-sized punching bag hung. She punched, yelling all the while about the ineffectiveness of the police force, and Tom watched. He fell asleep against the arm of the couch with Sophy curled up like a cat on the opposite side.

“I’ll stay until Francis comes back,” he said.

“He won’t be home until tomorrow,” Sophy answered.

“I’m not going to leave you alone right now. Not until they find E.C..”

The police have not found E.C. by the morning. Nor have they found him by the late afternoon when Francis barrels through the door with Blanky in tow. He tosses his suitcase down and sweeps Sophy into a tight hug.

“Are you certain you’re unharmed, dear?” he asks quietly.

“Yes,” Sophy answers. “I’ve been quite safe all night. Tom has been here with me. Edward took John home from the hospital a few hours ago. He’s being looked after by his Mr. Hartnell for the next few days.”

“Any luck finding the bastard?” Blanky asks. Sophy shakes her head.

“The cops are useless, as always,” she says. Tom bites the inside of his lip. No matter how many times he called, they always showed up too late. _She fell,_ Elsa’s father used to say. Tom could smell the drink on him; so could they, judging by the way they would wrinkle their noses, but still they would leave the little girl with the black eye sitting on the sofa next to the man who hit her.

“You look like Death ran you over with a Lambretta, Tom” Blanky says. Tom looks up from the carpet.

“Huh?”

“Go home, lad. Get some sleep. We’re all going to be okay.”

“Yeah,” Tom says, standing up and straightening his shirt. “Let me know if anything changes, yeah?”

Francis pats him on the back and Sophy hugs him goodbye, and Tom has the strange feeling that he doesn’t need to go anywhere because he’s already home.

He bumps into a short man with red-blond hair outside his building.

“Ah, sorry,” he says, and reaches for the door.

“No worries, mate,” the man says. “Jopson, right?”

Tom pauses. “Yes?”

The man smiles, big and bright. It doesn’t reach his eyes. “Neil Hickey,” he says. “I work with Elzbieta.” He extends a hand. His grip is too tight, too sharp, to be friendly.

“Are you Polish yourself, Mr. Hickey?” His accent on Elsa’s name was good enough for him to be a native speaker, though he has no trace of it when he speaks now.

“I’ve been around,” he says. He smiles again, and it looks like a mouth full of knives. “I’ll be seeing you, Thomas Jopson.”

Elsa leaps up from the couch as soon as he opens the door, and she’s hugging him before he can untie his shoes.

“I’m so sorry, Tommy,” she says. “I never should have acted like that. It was wrong, and I have no excuse, but watching you walk out the door… I’m so sorry. I love you. Forgive me?”

Tom hadn’t prepared for this. “Yes,” he says, out of habit. “Yes, of course I forgive you.”

The dinner date was Elsa’s idea.

“I’d like to meet your friend,” she said, the day after John was stabbed. “Sophy. She’s important to you, isn’t she?”

Tom said yes.

Now that they’re here, after weeks of schedule conflicts and a happy stalemate at home, Tom regrets agreeing to this.

Francis and Sophy are sat across from him and Elsa at a glass-top table at an Italian restaurant that is well outside Tom’s budget. Sophy had reassured him it wouldn’t be a problem (“It’s my turn to pay, Tom. You can pay for tacos next Tuesday.”), but dressed in his best pair of secondhand tweed trousers, Tom feels spectacularly out of place.

On his right, Elsa occupies herself with the menu, speaking little.

“A pile of shit on the doorstep is one thing, but stabbing one of my men?” Francis is still irate. He has spent the last few weeks stomping around the office and disappearing for hours at a time. Checking for hidden cameras, Blanky had said, and Tom still isn’t sure if he was joking.

With John still recovering at home, accounting duties had fallen to Tom. It wasn’t all bad—he wasn’t bad with numbers, and the extra work gave him an excuse to stay at the office late. It wasn’t Elsa he was avoiding, he told himself. It was the arguments. The fighting. Just last night he woke up with his wife in his arms, head tucked against his chest. The less time he spent at home, the better things seemed to be.

But then again, maybe not.

“Do you think Francis considers you a friend?” Elsa asks on the train ride home.

Tom sits beside her, arm around her shoulders. “Yes.”

Elsa stares at the tube map above the seats opposite. “Hmm,” she says.

Tom shouldn’t ask. He knows he shouldn’t. Things have been good lately, and he doesn’t want to break the fragile happiness between them.

But Francis is his friend. More than that—he sees something in Tom that no one else can. He sought him out—called _Ann Ross_ for his number, for Christ’s sake—because he valued his work. Francis gave him _The Mariner_. Francis gave him a family.

“He’s my friend, Elsa.” Tom can’t help the anger that rises in his belly. He withdraws his arm, folds his hands in his lap.

“I know,” Elsa says. “It’s just… Sophy said some things when we were in the loo.”

“She’s also my friend. One of my closest friends.” The other, of course, is Edward. For a brief moment, he’s glad she doesn’t know anything about him. He wants to protect him from being a source of their fights _(like a secret lover_ , his mind supplies. He lets the thought linger.).

“He pities you, you know.”

“Francis isn’t like that.”

“Taking us out tonight was like charity work for him.”

“Stop it, Elsa.”

“I bet they’re talking about us right now.”

“Stop it.”

“’Oh, the Jopsons can’t afford to go out with us! Look what they’re wearing. They’ve never even been to Italy, they don’t know what _real_ pasta tastes like. I can barely understand Elisabeth’s accent. Look how unhappy they are together.’”

The train is arriving at their station, and Tom stands before the train comes to a stop. The force of the brakes hitting knocks him against one of the yellow poles, but the impact is negligible compared to Elsa’s words.

“We’re not like them,” Elsa says, catching him by the elbow.

“They’re my friends,” Tom says again. He keeps up the pace, refusing to slow until he has to reach into his wallet to dig out his Oyster Card.

“No, Tom,” she says. She has both of their cards in her hand. “They aren’t. They could never be.”

She swipes Tom’s first, gestures for him to go through the barricade. He waits for her.

“Why do you want me to be unhappy?”

She gives him a sad look. “I’m just trying to take care of you.”

Tom is on the couch again. Elsa hadn’t kicked him out of bed—no, she’s quite insistent that he come to bed each night, but he feels like the invitation to his own bedroom is based in surveillance rather than an offer of peace. He still leaves his phone on his nightstand to charge.

He knows Elsa has been reading his messages, checking his social media. It’s easier to leave his phone in a place where she can access it freely, rather than have his fears of her swapping their phones proven true.

Tom spends the first ten minutes of his day stretching out his sore back, then walks past his station to catch the train at the next one, or the next one. When he has the time, he walks until his leg hurts more than his back. The familiar ache is comforting. He knows where the injury came from, and he knows that the cause of this pain is where she belongs.

Today is one of those days where his calf muscle starts to cramp when he’s between stations, and he limps down the steps to catch the tube. Arriving at work, he heads straight for the freezer and for one of John’s emergency icepacks. He props his foot up on a kitchen chair he drags over to his desk.

“You know,” George says, peering over his reading glasses, “you should put heat on that instead.”

“It’s fine,” Tom says. He likes George. He doesn’t want him to figure out his stupid, childish fear of burns.

Edward looks between him and George, but doesn’t say anything.

“You’re a strange pickle,” George says. “You barely heat up your lunch… never drink coffee…”

“I drink coffee,” Tom says. He has a glass of iced coffee in front of him right now. He lifts it in a mock toast.

“ _Iced_ coffee,” George clarifies.

“Shove off, George,” Edward chimes in. “Let the man protect his soft, sensual mouth.”

Tom freezes. He is acutely aware of how Edward is watching his lips press against the glass rim of the cup.

“Sensitive!” Edward yells. “I meant sensitive—sorry Tom, I didn’t mean to shoot my shot so early in the morning.”

Tom laughs. It was a joke. Of course it was. What else could it be?

George makes a sound of discovery behind him. “What you need is one of those baby thermometres! I have one for my little lassie, very useful! You’d never want to make her bathwater too hot! Oh, to cause pain, however accidental, to a sweet child…”

Tom stands, knocking his coffee over and pushing his chair back with enough force to make it teeter on two wheels.

“Excuse me,” he says through gritted teeth.

He can only see the door. He sees the handle. He reaches for it, half expecting the metal to burn when he places his hand on it. But it’s cool, and brings him back to himself just long enough to turn around, lock eyes with Edward, and force his face into a hopefully passable smile.

Edward finds him sitting on the back steps of the building. The bin men have forgotten to empty their bins again, and trash bags spill from the dumpster. The smell of garbage mixes with the smell of the rain.

“Alright?” Edward asks.

“Not really.”

“Yeah, stupid question.” Edward sits on the step next to him. Their shoulders brush each time one of them moves. “What happened?”

“My mum. Hot water. When we were too loud, or too messy, or when I cried.” He’s never told anyone before. “I couldn’t stand the sound of a bath running for years. Even now, I--” his voice breaks.

“Christ.” Edward is shaking his head. “Can I—can I just—fuck it, can I hug you? Please?”

Tom nods, and then Edward’s arms are around him and his face is buried in Edward’s neck. The wet garbage smell fades away and is replaced by the scent he’s missed so much: sun-warmed sand and something fresh, something _safe_.

“The doctor called them ‘dip burns’,” he says into Edward’s neck. “Second degree burns up to my knees on both legs, red hands from the pot on the stove. They took her away.”

“ _Jesus,_ Tom. I—no child should ever have to deal with that. I’m so—I can’t— _fuck,_ Tom.” Edward’s arms tighten around him, and Tom can’t help it. He shifts closer, leans into him. He lets himself feel comfortable, just for a moment, before the guilt sets in.

“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have sprung all that on you.” Tom pulls away. “I know it’s a lot to deal with. You don’t have to say anything. You can ignore it. Please ignore it.”

Edward lets him slip away. He’s never looked more morose. “I’m glad you told me. Thank you for trusting me.” Edward reaches out; Tom lets him take his hand. “You don’t have to apologize when you’re with me. Your past is a part of you. And I—“ Edward looks away. Tom watches the bob of his throat as he swallows nervously. “I want all—“

A crash from behind the dumpster makes them both jump.

“An animal?” Tom asks. It didn’t sound like an animal. Edward looks up and down the alley, biting his lip.

“Inside?”

Tom nods, and he pulls the fire escape door open. As he pulls the door shut behind him, he almost misses a flash of red-gold hair.

* * *

“Let me tell you about my new boyfriend.”

“Don’t you have volunteer fires to put out?”

Tozer shrugs, stirs his iced latte. His new gig as a volunteer firefighter apparently means ‘getting coffee with Edward while on call.’ “They’ll call if they need me. Now, do you want to hear about how your buddy’s getting laid on the regular?”

Edward shakes his head, but he laughs and takes a sip of his coffee (iced, even though it’s September and it’s raining. It’s definitely not because it reminds him of Tom. He’s a perfectly reasonable adult who can survive a Bank Holiday weekend without seeing him.). “Go ahead.”

“Right, so, remember Tommy Armitage?”

“He had a thing for you.”

“Yeah! And you said I should pretend to date someone, so I asked my friend Cornelius to pretend to be my boyfriend. You know, go out for dinner, come with me to a couple of garrison events, meet the guys at the Fire Department…”

“That’s not what I said, but sure, go on.” Edward has an idea of where this is going. It’s just like Tozer to find a partner in the most outrageous, convoluted way possible.

“Well, eventually we just started hanging out all the time. And we were at mine one night and I said something about us being good at fake dating and Cornelius was like ‘who says it’s fake?’ and then we fucked.”

Edward leans back in his chair. He has to put some distance between his ears and Tozer’s words. “I’m sorry? You just… went from zero to fucking?”

“We were playing Call of Duty as per normal! Then we just… started making out. It was hot, y’know?”

Edward did not know.

“Anyways, he’s my boyfriend now. I’m part of your club, Eddie!”

“It’s not a club! And _please_ don’t call me that, _Sollie._ ”

Tozer takes a hefty slurp of his latte. “Point taken.”

* * *

When Tom gets home, easing the door shut behind him, the flat is cleaner than he left it in the morning. He’s pleased; he can relax tonight. Maybe it’s a sign things are going to get better.

“Tom, can we talk?”

Elsa is brushing the hair of one of her dolls again. Tom has given up on his effort to remember their names. She’s holding it like a baby, and Tom’s stomach turns over in his belly. He pulls up a kitchen chair anyways.

“I think it’s time we started a family.”

He knew it was coming, but it still hits him like a shock of cold water to the face.

“A child isn’t going to fix things,” he says.

“I’ve waited for you,” Elsa says bitterly. “I’ve been waiting for twelve years. You knew this was what I wanted and instead…” she gestures around her at their shabby flat.

“Our children deserve better than this. Better than what we had. I thought--”

“Thought things would get better?”

Tom drops his head to his hands. “Look,” he says to his wife, “we can’t even have a conversation without fighting. We’ll be no better than our parents.”

Elsa puts the doll aside and stands. “Don’t compare me to your mother. I would never do the things she did to you.” The anger in her voice is bitter. “She hurt you, Tom.”

Tom closes his eyes and counts to ten, willing his emotions away. This time, they don’t go away and his frustration with everything finally bubbles up and he stands, too. “ _You_ hurt me, Elsa! You’re always on me about my job and about the flat and about my friends! I haven’t seen my sister in years because you can’t get over a fight you had half a decade ago! You take everything I love and you ruin it.”

“Remember when you used to love _me_?”

“There’s nothing left to fix, Bietka. I can’t do this anymore.”

“So you’re giving up? You think it’s easier to run and hide when things get hard? I’m not surprised. It’s what you’ve always done.”

Tom sits down, defeated, on the couch. “I’m not running,” he says to his knees.

“You can’t stand not getting what you want. You and your stupid camera, living in a fantasy world while I’m the one who has to go to work every night.”

“I work, Bietka. I always have. And I’ve always given up what I want for you. I sold half my lenses to pay the deposit on this place, remember?”

Elsa sits at the kitchen table, facing away from him. “All you care about is your stupid magazine and your so-called friends.”

“They care more about me than you do.”

“Then why don’t you go fuck Sophy? And Francis, while you’re at it,” she says.

“Is that it, then? Are we done? Do you want a divorce?”

His only response is the slamming of the door to the bedroom that is now hers, leaving him alone in a place that has never felt like home.

* * *

Edward receives an email from Francis on the last warm Sunday in September. He almost doesn’t open it. He wouldn’t, if he wasn’t looking for any excuse to cancel on Tozer and his boyfriend. He can’t imagine anything worse than being the odd man out while Tozer and Cornelius flirt in front of him.

_Deadline moved up. Need the follow-up story on the wooden boat guy by Monday morning. Go outside, Edward. Francis._

Edward sighs dramatically to himself. He opens his phone to cancel on Tozer.

He’s barely finished editing his article when he realizes that Tom still has the photos on his camera. He looks at the clock. It’s nearly gone seven. He wrestles with himself for ten minutes before deciding to call. It’s work stuff. He can phone Tom for work stuff on a Sunday night.

Tom answers on the second ring. “Ed?”

He loves it when Tom calls him Ed. No one else does. It’s a nickname, just for Tom to use, and his knees go weak when he hears it.

“Hey, Tom,” he says. “I, uh—how are you?”

“I’m fine,” he says. He sounds worried. “How are you?”

Right. Edward had forgotten. “Ah! Yes, the deadline for the Wooden Boat Guy piece got moved up and I need the pictures so I can put it together for tomorrow.”

“For tomorrow? Send me the article and I can do it tonight.”

It is now that Edward realizes that he had forgotten all about the modern technology of email and already has his shoes on. Or maybe he just really, really wants to see Tom.

“Actually, I’m over on your side of town,” he lies, closing the door to his flat quietly and walking towards the elevator. “I can come by in a bit, put them on a flash drive. I have the layout set up on my laptop already, why risk it getting messed up over email, right?”

“You’re sure it’s no problem?” Tom asks.

“Not at all! See you soon, Tom.”

“See you. Ed,” he adds. Edward leans against the wall of the elevator as it descends.

He’s at the entrance to the building and he calls Tom again.

He answers: “Ed! Hi, I’ll come down.” He hangs up.

Edward kicks a cigarette butt around while he waits. He looks around. It’s not a very nice neighbourhood.

Then the door clicks open and Tom is there, smiling in a t-shirt and jeans and without the hair gel a lock of loose hair falls over his forehead and Edward could come home to this shitty building every day for the rest of his life if this was who he was coming home to. Tom unlocks the next door and lets him in, pointing him to the elevator.

“How did the article go?”

“Huh?” Edward says stupidly. He was fantasizing about kissing Tom in an elevator on the way up to their flat. He should not be fantasizing about this right now. He’s a professional. He’s just a professional—a friend, even—on his way to see where his best friend lives. With his wife.

His wife who is sitting at the table when Tom opens the door and lets him in.

“Hello,” Edward says. She doesn’t look up from her sewing. “I’m Edward. Tom’s friend.”

Tom gestures to the table. “Please, sit down. I’ll go grab my camera.”

Edward sits down across from Elsa. “That looks nice,” he says, nodding to the tiny dress she is sewing. He looks past her to the creepy doll standing on the kitchen counter. It has its back to him, but it’s uncanny enough that he expects it to turn around and look at him with evil glassy eyes.

Mrs. Jopson sighs and puts down her sewing. “Why are you here?”

“I need the photos from the interview we did last week.”

“He could have emailed them.”

“He could, but I was already around. I was worried about the quality.”

“The quality?”

“The quality of the photos. For the magazine.”

Tom comes back into the room carrying his camera bag and a laptop computer.

“Are you not going to offer your guest a cup of tea, love?” Elsa says. Tom stiffens.

Edward looks between them, spies the kettle on the stove. “I’ll get it.”

“No, no,” Tom says. “Let me.” He stands.

“Has your friend finally cured you of your irrational fear of hot water?” Elsa says. She picks up her sewing again and begins to stitch.

Edward stands. “I don’t think it’s irrational.” Tom is looking at him with a pleading look in his eye. He shakes his head, just enough for Edward to notice. But Edward doesn’t sit back down. Instead, he walks over to the kettle and snatches it out of Tom’s hands. “You go get the photos done. I’ll get this.” Tom’s hand touches the small of his back as he returns to the table.

“Of course you know him better than I do, Edward,” Elsa says. “I’m going to bed.”

The door to the bedroom slams, and Tom exhales heavily. “I’m sorry, Ed, she’s—“

“It’s fine,” Edward says. The kettle is heating up, so he returns to sit next to Tom.

“It’s an old computer,” he says. “It might take a bit of time.” The file transfer is at 10%. Edward looks into the camera bag. The bag is filled with all sorts of things Edward knows nothing about.

“What do these lenses do?” he asks. It’s not just passing the time; he wants to know.

“Oh!” Tom says, surprised. “Well, this one is a wide-angle lens, for… wide angles. Landscapes and stuff. And this one is a macro lens, like the one I used for those detail shots back at the Maritime Museum. And this one is a telephoto lens. It’s not like my last one—I had a perfect Sigma telephoto lens with a focus range limiter that would be so fun to use for one of the yacht shows Francis is always talking about, but it gets the job done.”

“Did it break?” Edward asks. Tom sounds wistful, like he’s talking about a long-lost lover.

“I had to sell it. Flat deposit.”

Edward forces a smile. “Isn’t your birthday coming up?”

Tom laughs. “They’re _expensive,_ Ed. Way too expensive.”

The click of the kettle shutting off makes him jump, and Tom laughs nervously.

“Tea?” he asks. Edward shakes his head.

“I never really wanted any.” Tom laughs again.

“Thank you, Ed.”

“For what?”

“For understanding.” Tom looks away to where the steam rises from the boiling water in the kettle.

“It’s not a difficult thing to do. I care about you. Quite a lot, really.” He feels eyes on him, but when he glances to the bedroom door, it’s closed. It must be the dolls. Edward looks over his shoulder and, sure enough, there’s another one of those creepy, porcelain dolls sitting in the corner of the room.

“Do they freak you out?” Tom asks.

Edward nods. “Yes. Very much. Please don’t get murdered by Princess Diana-doll or whatever that one is.” He points to the doll in the corner.

“Excuse you, Edward Little. That’s Princess…” he trails off. “God, fuck if I know. There’s so many of them.”

Tom’s computer dings and he looks back to his screen. He unplugs the flash drive and hands it over to Edward. “Here you go, Ed.”

He takes it. Their fingers brush. “Thank you.”

Tom glances back towards his bedroom door. It’s still closed tight. “I’ll walk you out.”

* * *

“I don’t want him to come back here.”

Tom is fresh out of the shower, still towelling his hair. The evening is warm; he’s wearing a pair of navy blue boxers that he will sleep in. Elsa is pouring a cup of tea.

“I don’t either. Not if you’re going to act the way you did.”

Ed’s visit has made him bold. Tom at work and Tom at home were always two separate personalities, but Edward’s presence in his home made him realize he wants to be the Thomas Jopson he is at work. The Tom who has friends; the Tom who has goals and the talent to reach them; the Tom who is starting to realize that he’s worth more than the fight they’re about to have.

His outburst has caused Elsa to pause.

“This is _our_ home, Thomas. We don’t have people over. We never have.”

“It was about work,” he says. He’s becoming angry. “The work that pays the rent? The work that pays off our debt? The work that pays for the stupid dolls you buy just to see how far you can push me until I say something and you use it as an excuse to be horrible to me?”

Elsa rolls her eyes. “Stop exaggerating, Tom. If you acted like an adult you wouldn’t be hurt by everything I say.”

“How is it ‘acting like an adult’ to hide job offers from me? I know about Fitzjames’s magazine. I know about the Ross Museum. What is it? You’re miserable at your job so I have to be miserable at mine? You can’t bear to see me happy?”

“They’re not good for you! You’re always working late and you’re out there telling lies about me—“

“I choose to work late because I don’t want to come home to you!”

Silence falls. Elsa’s hands tighten on the mug of tea as steam rises and curls in the air. She takes the teabag out, shakes it once, and throws it in the trash. Then she grabs the end of Tom’s towel, yanks it off his shoulders, and throws the cup of hot tea at his chest.

“Happy birthday, honey,” Elsa greets him when he wakes up the next morning. She’s wearing one of his shirts over a pair of gym shorts. The countertop is littered with ingredients; she’s making omelettes.

(He hates eggs, but he’ll eat everything on his plate without a word.)

“Thank you,” he answers flatly. “Has Kate called yet?”

Elsa shakes her head and begins humming a tune he doesn’t recognize.

“I’m going to call her before I go to work.” He shouldn’t explain but he does anyways. He doesn’t want a repeat of what happened with Sophy.

Tom returns to the bedroom, finds his phone, calls his sister. It rings and rings and she doesn’t pick up. He tries again. No answer.

He dresses. The skin on his chest is red from last night’s scalds. He buttons his shirt and winces at the way the fabric rubs against the sensitive skin.

“Breakfast is ready, love!” Elsa calls from the kitchen. The cutlery clinks together as she sets the table. He can feel a headache coming on. He wants to go to work, but first, he must eat.

The eggs are heavy in his stomach during the tube ride. Each jerk of the train carriage sends the omelette he forced himself to swallow rolling around his insides. The zipper of his jacket bangs against the burn on his chest. He feels sick, but squeezes his eyes shut until the nausea passes. When he arrives at his stop, he takes the nearest exit and walks in the open as it begins to rain. It’s a cold December rain. Droplets pelt his face and hair, and Tom stops, raising his head towards the sky. It’s his thirty-first birthday. He wonders how many more birthdays he will have to endure.

The rain turns to sleet as he rounds the corner to the office. It’s early still, but there is a light on in _The Mariner’_ s office that blinks off as he pushes open the glass doors. The heating is on; the smell of burning dust on the radiator has him gagging and he runs, undignified, to the lobby restroom to upend his entire breakfast.

By the time he makes it up the stairs, his hair is dry. He hasn’t stopped shaking yet but the tremors have subsided enough that he hopes no one will notice. Or maybe he wants someone to notice; he wants someone to ask him what is wrong; to wrap them in their black Burberry overcoat, warmed from their body and smelling like their aftershave; to take him in their arms and let him rest, just for today. His special day. Kate called it that, once. She had bought him a chocolate cake and they shared it in the lobby of their apartment building, just two forks, two children, and an entire birthday cake.

When he pushes open the plain door with a little wooden boat nailed over the empty name placard, the last thing he expects is to be hit in the face with a handful of confetti and all six of The Mariner’s employees to yell _surprise!_

It’s a testament to his own control that he does not collapse on the ground and begin to cry. Instead, he forces a smile and asks, “What is this?”

“It’s your birthday!” George says. He wiggles his fingers enthusiastically. “Right?”

He looks at Ed for confirmation rather than Tom. Ed nods.

“We have croissants,” John points out. “Birthday croissants.”

“Your favourite,” Francis adds.

“And iced coffee, even though it’s bloody cold out,” Blanky offers.

They all stare at Tom, waiting for an answer.

“I’ve never had a birthday party before,” he admits. It’s meant to explain why he doesn’t know what to do, how to act, but all of them look scandalized.

“Break out the hats,” Eddie Hoar says solemnly, and George unearths a massive canvas bag from under his desk. Colourful bits of plastic wrapper hang out from the top. George looks positively feral as he digs in the bag until he finds a gaudy plastic crown that is labelled “Birthday King” in balloon letters. He hands it off to Edward.

There is a flurry of activity as streamers are hung and party favours are distributed, so he doesn’t notice Edward approach.

Ed’s close enough to kiss when he slides the crown onto Tom’s head.

“Happy birthday, Tom,” he says. He doesn’t step away.

“Thanks,” Tom says. He wonders if it would be pathetic to admit that this is the best birthday he’s ever had, even as his skin rubs raw against the inside of his shirt and his stomach aches.

“So, Birthday King,” Edward murmurs, “have you made your birthday wish yet?”

Tom can feel his lips part and his eyes close. His head begins to tilt on its own volition. He’s so _close_ , and he _wants._ He hasn’t felt desire like this before, not before now. Not before Edward Little.

“I have,” he says.

Or tries to say, until he is cut off by a loud _honk_ as Blanky blows into a green plastic kazoo.

Tom laughs nervously and Ed bites his lower lip, both stepping backwards and looking towards the source of the noise.

John is laughing. George has chocolate on his nose from the croissant he appears to be inhaling. Blanky is attempting a one-man kazoo rendition of _The Mariner’s Revenge Song,_ and Francis…

Francis is sitting on Tom’s desk, holding a small box wrapped in dark blue paper. He holds it out.

“You really didn’t have to,” Tom says. The attention is making him dizzy. He’s glad he already vomited before coming into the office.

“I lost the receipt. You have to accept it now,” Francis says. He slides off the desk and hovers over Tom’s shoulder as he opens it.

He’s seen the way children open gifts on TV—ripping into the paper and tearing it to shreds. On the Christmases and birthdays he received presents, they were almost always in gift bags with the last recipient’s name scratched out or wrapped in last year’s gift wrap, carefully smoothed out and re-taped. He slides a finger under the taped edge. The gift wrap is thick and textured and expensive. He picks at the tape and peels it off, piece by piece. Out the corner of his eye, he watches Francis’s expression. His fond smile only grows with each piece of tape Thomas removes and sticks to the edge of his desk.

The others have gathered around when he finally finishes and unfolds the paper.

It’s a Sigma telephoto camera lens with a focus range limiter.

The one he described to Ed when he came for tea. The one he sold to pay the deposit on his flat.

Tom gapes stupidly at Francis. When Francis starts to laugh, he turns and gapes stupidly at Ed.

“I listen,” he shrugs, and all of a sudden Tom is crushed in the middle of a tangle of limbs. It takes him a moment to realize it’s a hug, if only because Ed’s breath is hot against his neck and the feel of his body (he can tell it’s _his,_ not Francis’s or Blanky’s or George’s or John’s) pressed against his makes him feel like he is weightless.

The card comes in the mail the same way it always does. It arrives in a nondescript white envelope with no return address. _Tommy_ , it says on the envelope. He doesn’t need a return address to know it comes from the women’s prison. He doesn’t need to open it to know it contains the same message it did last year: _I miss you. Please visit. I love you. Happy Birthday._

Tom hasn’t gone to visit his mother in ten years, but he’s always opened her letters.

Today, he tears the envelope in half and throws it in the trash.


	3. III.

Francis calls a staff meeting in the middle of the day.

“We’ve got the funding,” is all he says, and he looks at the rest of them like they’re supposed to understand what he means. He is met with blank stares.

“Franklin’s investment. We got it.”

Blanky whoops. It’s the only sound apart from the slurping sound coming from Ed and his ever-present coffee mug.

“What does that mean, exactly?” Edward asks when he swallows. It’s too warm and bright in the office to see the steam rising. Ed keeps it close.

“It means, my dearest Eduardo Pequeño,” Blanky says with a feral grin, “we are going on vacation.”

“Business trip!” Francis nearly shouts. “Don’t let Sir John hear the v-word or he’ll take the money and shove it back up Fitzjames’s arse with the rest of the funding.”

Everyone looks ecstatic. There’s a bounce in Ed’s step when he gets up to refill his coffee mug. George has his eyes scrunched up like he’s about to cry. Even John is practically vibrating in his chair.

Tom wonders if he missed something. He feels as uneasy as he did on his first day when he asks, “Where are we going?”

Francis waits for Ed to seat himself again, this time with an additional glass of cold brew with milk and sugar that he slides over to Tom. The coffee spills over the top just enough for a drop to slide down the side of the cup. Tom brushes it away with a finger and licks it off. He can feel Ed’s eyes on him. He pretends to be interested in Francis’s shuffling papers when he runs the same finger around the rim of the glass. Ed’s attention, for once, is not on his coffee. The cup is halfway to his lips and he leaves it there, floating in space, waiting.

With exacting nonchalance, Tom lifts the finger to his mouth and closes his lips around the tip. Ed’s coffee mug hits the table with a _clunk_ and it makes them all jump.

“Sorry,” he says. His cheeks are red.

“Right,” Francis begins. “John—your lad is a bit of a photographer, yes?”

John nods proudly. “He had a photo published in NME once.”

“Good enough. We’ll offer him a contract. Your lad and George will cover the Mystic Yacht Show in America. You’ll go with them, of course, but that seemed unfair so George’s missus is also invited. And the wee potato.”

“Aha! Land of the free eagles! And Elvis!” George claps a hand over his heart. “Is Mystic Seaport near Graceland?”

No one answers.

“It can’t be that far,” Ed says.

“Day trip? Tommy loves Elvis.” John suggests.

“Thomas—Mr. Blanky—and myself will cover the Tromsø International Show. We’re Arctic veterans, aren’t we, Thomas?”

Mr. Blanky’s eyes darken. “Aye, remember last time? Old John Ross didn’t know how close he came.”

“Our chances of getting lost at sea again are astronomically lower now that Ross won’t be with us,” Francis shudders. “Though I would have helped you ditch the body if that ice pick wasn’t such a piece of—“

Francis clears his throat, reprimanding himself. He composes himself while Blanky cackles.

“And that leaves Edward and Tom to do the Wooden Boat Show in Aruba.”

“Ye-es,” Ed moans obscenely. “Francis, you are a god. I promise to reply to your emails for an entire year as a thank-you.”

“Just do your bloody job, Edward.”

They start researching that afternoon. The endorphins floating around in Tom’s bloodstream make it impossible to go home when there’s work to be done and plans to be made. After booking their flights and hotel, he wants to plan the layout of their piece for a special edition issue; all three conventions will be given extensive write-ups and photo spreads, but only one can take the cover story. The competition is friendly, but Tom wants to win. With Ed, he knows he can.

They work together well, he and Ed. After Francis and Blanky and George and John leave for the night, they’re still working, side by side, with a playlist of soft tropical guitar music playing in the background.

The air changes when the mood shifts. The comfortable silence turns tense, and Tom instinctively braces for an impact that doesn’t come.

“Can I ask you something?” Ed says. He stops typing, turns to face Tom. Tom turns, and their knees knock together under the desk. Tom’s heart leaps into his throat. He does a quick mental catalogue of his body, searching for bruises or burns that might be visible. There’s only one on his foot from yesterday morning when he knocked Elsa’s curling iron off the bathroom counter. She’d left it plugged in after leaving for work. Tom feels guilty for wondering if she did it on purpose.

“Are you safe? At home?”

It’s not a question Tom expects. It’s not a question he’s ever been asked before so he doesn’t know how to lie when he answers, “No, I don’t think so.”

“You’re different at home,” Ed says. He’s still facing Tom, elbows on the desk and a look of concern on his face.

“I’m different at work,” Tom corrects gently.

“Shouldn’t you be the person you are where you’re happiest?”

Tom thinks of the click of his camera, the lunches with Sophy, the feel of Ed’s jacket around his shoulders.

“I can’t,” he says. “I’ve made my choice.”

Ed is silent as he leans forward on his elbows. Behind him, his computer monitor blinks off. The green light changes to orange.

“Does she always treat you like that?” he asks quietly.

The police asked him the same question about his mother. _No,_ he said, _it was an accident._ _Mommy loves me._

He knew it was a lie then, and he knows it is a lie now. When the police left, he hid behind the crib and cried.

His silence goes on too long. It hangs in the air and answers Ed’s question better than the truth tumbling from Tom’s mouth.

“It wasn’t always like this,” Tom sighs. He slides his arms across the desk, searching for comfort. Edward gives it to him willingly. His hands skirt over Tom’s, rest on the skin of his wrists exposed beneath the cuffs of his sweater. One of his thumbs rubs over Tom’s pulse point.

Tom takes a deep breath, and he begins.

“She was my neighbour. I called her Bietka, then. Bietka and Tommy. My mother had an addiction. Heroin.”

“How old were you?”

“The first time she overdosed I was five. Kate showed me what to do. Call 999, hide any evidence that there were kids living with her, go and hide under the slide in the park until the ambulance left. Whenever she was awake, she was cruel. Kate started sending me over to Elsa’s. They were close in age, but Kate started working when she was fourteen. Elsa’s dad was an alcoholic. He hit her, sometimes, but he went out a lot. We spent a lot of time together. I did my homework with her, and we read books, and she taught herself how to sew on a little vintage machine while I suffered through math. Mom was arrested when I was twelve. My two younger siblings were put in foster care. Kate lied about her age so she could look after me. She was seventeen. At some point I suggested getting married to Elsa, but I can’t remember when. I turned eighteen, Kate married her boyfriend, and then Bietka’s dad died. He didn’t have much, but he left her some money, so we got married, I bought my first camera, and Bietka—who decided to go by Elsa, then—more English—got into fashion, working at a little place in Soho. I wanted to get into wildlife photography.”

“Christ, Tom, that’s— _Christ, Tom.”_

“I know, what wildlife is there in London?”

“ _Tom,”_ Ed says pointedly. “Alright, so you married your babysitter and you were living the bohemian artist’s life in London?”

“She wasn’t my babysitter!”

“She sounds like your babysitter, mate.”

Tom shakes his head. “I worked at Tesco for a while. I took some photography classes in the evenings, hoping I could make a career out of it. Elsa was dedicated to her career. She quit the shop and started her own design shop. It wasn’t much, but it made her happy. Who was I to deny her happiness? She gave me the only happy memories of my childhood. I owed it to her. I _owe_ it to her. But by then we couldn’t pay rent and we were evicted. Kate and Colin took us in, but Kate and Elsa… they’d always gotten along fine, but they started fighting.”

“About what?” From the look on his face, Ed knows the answer.

“About me. About how I was working and trying to make a life for us while she was being selfish and trying to ‘chase her dreams of being a fashion designer’. Elsa would bite back and accuse Kate of being too involved in our relationship. This went on for years. I started doing wedding photography for some of my co-workers as a side job, and it took up most of my days off. About three years ago she told me she refused to see Kate anymore. This was right after she got the job at the hospital. We fought about it for a long time. I got an offer as a staff photographer for a newspaper and I accepted without telling her. She wasn’t happy. I mean, I made her get a job she hated while I was doing what I loved. We were just… so close to losing another apartment, and I couldn’t… I just had to do _something--_ ”

Ed cuts him off with a wave of his hand. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Tom. You know that, right?”

“I made her unhappy.”

“She made herself unhappy and blamed it on you.”

“I took away the one thing that she loved.”

“And she took _everything_ from you! She’s horrible to you, Tom.”

“It sounds worse than it is.”

Edward’s hands tighten around his wrists. “Have you thought about leaving?”

_Yes,_ Tom wants to say. _Kiss me so I have an excuse to end it tonight._

“I can’t,” he says instead, but _I can’t do it alone_ is what he means.

Ed can’t read his mind because he doesn’t lean in, doesn’t press his lips to Tom’s. But he does say, “You’re not alone,” and for now, it’s enough.

* * *

They’re early to their gate and find seats facing the big window. Tom pulls out a book and, with a short glance at Edward, begins to read. Edward watches the plane from the last boarding session pull away and begin to roll towards the runway.

His last time overseas was ten years ago at least. He went with his older half-brother-- Matteo is an anthropologist and about as close to an explorer as you can get these days—to Brazil. Edward was working on his novel back then, but he decided a bit of freelance journalism couldn’t hurt. He just needed to find something to write about. In the end, he wrote a piece that had to be published anonymously; it was about illegal logging in the Amazon and how it drove the uncontacted Indigenous tribe Matt studied to make contact with the outside world.

He thinks about the people of Acre now. He thinks about the fear they must have felt when they saw airplanes soaring overhead, how they brandished arrows and spears to protect their way of life, fear captured on their faces by the National Geographic camera crew aboard. He thinks about how flying has always been a source of freedom for him—hours of peace where he has no responsibilities, high above the world with his life suspended in the capable hands of an invisible pilot.

He wonders how afraid the Acre Indigenes were when they emerged from the jungle.

He wonders if Matt was afraid, the only (half-) white professional who, though he had dedicated his life to the preservation of dying languages, too closely resembled the _pistaco_ conquistadores and rubber barons that had wrought destruction on the people he adored.

But then, the Littles have always had a penchant for inserting themselves where they don’t belong.

For Matt, it had launched a career in translation and recording the history of the Juruá people; Hattie, who had put on her deadliest stilettos and walked confidently through the backstage door of Ally Pally, is now married to a rock star; James had climbed Everest as his first 8000-metre-peak; Sanita still claims to have faked her way through med school, though Edward can’t for the life of him figure out how you could become a cardiologist without being genuinely good at your job.

All Edward wants is to kiss a man. A married man, into whose life he has inserted himself and whose hand he held again last week as they finalized their plans.

He feels like he’s about to step out of the jungle that he’s spent his entire life hiding in.

He doesn’t know if he wants to.

He doesn’t know if he can.

The chaos inside Edward’s mind is muted by the buzzing of his phone. It’s a text from Tozer.

_AND THEY ARE ROOMMATES_!

Edward is going to kill him. He never should have mentioned that he and Tom were going to be sharing a hotel room. Another message appears. It’s Tozer and who he assumes to be Cornelius. He’s shorter than Tozer, slighter, with red-blond hair that he wears pushed back so it falls down the back of his neck, brushing his shirt collar. Edward can’t see the appeal, but then again, he has Tom sitting on his right with his nose buried in a book, giving him the perfect side profile of a perfect man.

_I hate you_ , he texts back. Tozer sends him a string of emojis. Edward can’t quite decipher its meaning, but there’s an eggplant, a peach, and a tongue. He can guess. Quickly, he closes the message before Tom can glance over.

“You know,” Tom says, book still propped open against his knee, “I’ve never been on a plane before.”

“Really?”

“Never. I’ve only left London once, and that was by train.”

Edward stares in disbelief. “London is a hellhole.”

“Some of us don’t know any better, Ed,” Tom laughs. “When I want a vacation I go to Shoreditch.”

Ed doubles over in laughter. “Do you wear the Hawaiian shirts when you go? Stuff your cargo shorts full of Euros?”

Tom starts to laugh. “Please, I have _some_ taste. Only socks and sandals for me, thank you.” And then, ponderously, “I don’t own a pair of shorts.”

“You realize we’re going to a tropical paradise, yeah?”

Tom shrugs, still smiling. “I have an ugly scar on my leg. I don’t want to scare the tourists.”

“Stuff the tourists! You’ll look way too good with a tan, Tom.”

He stands and offers a hand to Tom. “Come on. We’re buying you an overpriced vacation wardrobe and we’re claiming it as expenses.”

He has no idea if Francis will cover any of this, but he’ll foot the bill anyways. The other option is losing momentum and dwelling on the comment that slipped out, admitting his sordid fantasy of Tom, naked save for a pair of ocean-blue swim trunks, glowing under the sun. Edward wonders if Tom freckles like he does, or if he tans. With a thrill, he realizes that he’ll soon find out.

The gate has switched its sign to announce their departure, and Edward Little is ready to step out into the sun.

* * *

Tom is wearing shorts for the first time since he was a child and he feels ridiculous. Ed made him change in the airport bathroom when they landed, and by the time he emerged wearing an off-white linen button-down covered with a subtle pattern of palm trees and a pair of ridiculously expensive chino shorts, Ed has already collected their bags. Tom can barely keep up with him as he weaves through the swarm of tourists and hails a taxi.

It’s not a long drive from the airport to the resort. The hotel is huge and right on the beach. It’s crowded with people when they arrive despite the blistering heat that hits his face when he steps out of the cab. In the distance, Tom can see the marina where the boat show will be held. Turning back towards the cab, he finds Ed with his face tilted towards the sun, eyes shut in bliss behind his gold-rimmed aviator sunglasses. A soft smile plays across his face. He’s lovely; really, truly lovely, and there is a pang of something painful in Tom’s chest. He wonders briefly if this was a bad idea, but the sun shining on Aruba does not ever seem to touch London and he knows it will never divulge his secrets.

Ed takes a deep breath before unloading his and Tom’s suitcases from the boot of the taxi. He makes to hand Tom’s bag to him. A strong gust of wind blows Tom’s hair across his forehead, and, as if he has made the same pact with the quiet sun, Ed gently brushes the lock of hair back into place behind Tom’s ear with the same soft smile.

He lost track of time completely once they left the airport. Tom is exhausted from travelling, and he mentions it to Ed once they get their room keys. Ed checks his watch.

“It’s around five in the afternoon, yeah? Want to just get room service and call it a night? We can watch a movie or something and rest up for tomorrow?”

Exhaustion outweighs the fear of giving into temptation. He will worry about being stuck in close quarters with Ed tomorrow. For now, all Tom can think about is a cool shower and a nice lie down.

“This isn’t a key,” Tom says when Ed hands him one of their room’s key fobs. They’re in the elevator on their way up to the fourth floor.

“It’s contactless,” Ed explains. “Just hold it up to the panel on the door.”

The elevator dings. The doors slide open. Tom squeezes out past Ed and drags his suitcase to their room. He holds the key fob up to the door and a green checkmark appears on the panel above the door knob.

“I want one of these for my flat!” Tom says. “It would make carrying the groceries in so much easier!”

Ed laughs. “Of all the things to get excited about… God, you’re—“

“Look!” Tom exclaims. Their room’s balcony looks out over the ocean. The sound of surf lapping at sand floats up through the screen door, and Tom is in love. His weariness forgotten, he leaves his suitcase on the floor and goes to stand on the balcony, leaning over the railing and spreading his arms out like a pair of wings. The breeze is back, whipping his hair around where the gel has grown loose, but Tom pays it no mind. He is warm and light and happy. And then Ed is behind him, softly singing _near, far, wherever you are_ in a funny voice and holding Tom’s spread arms in his, nosing at his neck and Tom can’t help rolling his head back and giving Ed more skin to nuzzle.

Against his neck, Ed breathes, “D’you think they have Titanic on demand?”

“I’ve never seen it,” Tom admits, just as soft. Ed pulls away, frazzled.

“What?”

“I’ve never seen it.”

Ed shakes his head and opens the screen door. “I’m sorry, Tom. That is absolute bullshit. No friend of mine is allowed to exist without knowing the joy of young Leo. Get your ass inside, I’ll order food, and we’re watching Titanic.”

Tom falls asleep before the boat even hits the iceberg. He wakes before his alarm and if he dreamed, he does not remember.

* * *

Mornings have never been kind to Edward Little. Today is no exception. The chime of his alarm makes his head feel like it’s about to explode. He needs coffee. He needs coffee _now,_ except it’s so damn hot already at—he checks the clock with a groan—seven in the morning there’s no way he’s going to be able to choke down more than a cup. He groans louder and scrapes himself off the mattress to a semi-standing position. He looks up. The other bed is empty. There is no sound of water running. Tom must have gotten up early and gone for breakfast. Edward can’t make much more sense of the world than this, so he drags himself into the shower and hopes the water will clear his head.

He gets out, towels off, shaves, and gets dressed before Tom pushes the door open with a hip, hands full balancing two plates of hash browns and sausages, two plastic cups of iced coffee from the café in the lobby, and a plate of toast and jam.

“I didn’t even have to take the key out of my pocket!” Tom says in awe. Edward smooths down the covers of his bed and takes the precariously balanced plate of toast from Tom, setting it down on the comforter. “Can you take the coffees?” Tom asks. “My arm’s gone numb.”

Edward hastens to take them and put them on the bedside table. Finally, Tom is able to take a plate in each hand and offers one to Edward. He’s already dressed and bright-eyed, hair back in perfect place after the toil of travel had undone him yesterday.

“Thanks,” Edward says. It doesn’t feel like enough once he drains half the cup of coffee in one go. “Seriously. You’re the best.”

Tom shakes his head, abashed. “I know you,” he shrugs.

Edward eats everything on his plate with voracious appetite before he finally sits back against the white pillows.

“C’mon, Ed, they said they wanted us there for eight. If we leave now we have time to get another coffee.”

Tom extends a hand and pulls Edward up. “You know me too well,” he says, but follows, both for the promise of more coffee and the feel of Tom’s hand in his own, still hanging on.

They’re halfway down the dock after Edward’s first interview when Tom tugs on his sleeve like a nervous child.

“I need to tell you something,” he says, staring purposefully at the sky just above Edward’s left ear.

Edward’s heart leaps into his throat. “Yeah,” he says, “of course.”

Tom leads him back towards the hotel until they’re alone on the path that leads from the marina.

“I can’t keep pretending,” Tom says. Edward wants to reach out and comfort him. He doesn’t want to pretend either. He can’t pretend there’s nothing between them, that it hasn’t been growing for more than a year. He can’t pretend that he doesn’t want Tom so bad it hurts. He can’t pretend that he doesn’t think the ‘sanctity of marriage’ can get fucked because Tom deserves more, Tom deserves to be treated like the amazing man he is, to be loved and held and supported and touched in every way a man can be.

“I’ve never been on a boat before.” The surprise must show on his face because Tom raises his eyebrows and says, “What?” like he’s challenging him to say what he was thinking.

He sort of tells the truth. “I thought you were getting divorced.”

Now Tom is the one surprised.

“Sorry, that was a bit blunt,” Edward says.

“No, that’s—“ Tom runs a hand through his hair. “I haven’t quite got there yet. I’m still stuck on the boat thing.” He gestures towards the rows of wooden boats, some big, some small, some old and mouldy, some polished to a perfect shine.

Edward looks out at the marina, trying to spot the director of the show. He sees her, talking animatedly in Spanish with an elderly couple. Her own wooden boat is similar to the one he learned to sail on when he was a kid.

“Do you want to go sailing?”

Tom laughs and says yes.

Tom does not stop laughing when they get into Clotílde’s electric yacht, or when Edward unties them and pulls them away from the dock, or when the first wave they hit crashes against the bow and splashes up, covering Tom in sea spray. For someone who’s never been to sea, he has remarkable balance and finds his sea legs immediately. He refuses to sit down and instead walks from the length of the small yacht, returning to stand by Edward’s side at the helm.

“Teach me?” Tom says, and Edward cannot refuse him. He shuffles them into the same position they were in yesterday; Tom in front with his arms on the wheel, Edward behind him, hands directing his in a careful and practiced way. He taught his younger siblings how to sail, but it was nothing like this. A wave makes Tom lose his footing and stumble back into Edward, but Edward’s steely grip on the helm (his micro-managing fists of doom, Hattie once called them) keeps Tom upright against his body.

“Sorry,” Tom says, but he doesn’t look it. His cheeks are flushed, his eyes are bright, and he’s smiling so hard laugh lines have appeared, flanking his mouth. He has never looked so beautiful. Edward is so distracted by Tom’s smile that he does not notice he has steered them directly into a tall wave until it breaks over the deck and they are both soaked from head to toe.

Tom starts laughing again, loud and happy and free. Edward shakes his hair like a dog, spraying Tom with water all over again, and Edward can hardly steer the boat for his own joy.

* * *

He loses track of Ed in the dinner crowd. There are seven buffet tables, each laden with different food, from fresh fruit to barbecued shrimp to elaborate desserts kept under glass to keep the sand from blowing into the towering cakes and piles of chocolate covered strawberries. The sheer number of people clamoring over each other for food is downright intimidating (and slightly grotesque), so Tom occupies himself plucking individual grapes off the stem at the fruit table until he can find a more substantial meal. The local catch of the day is nigh untouched. Tom has never had fresh fish before. Freshly battered and fried, maybe, but he had seen the little boat haul in its net of fish from the hotel balcony. Now satisfied, he grabs a couple of iced ciders from the cooler and goes to find Ed.

He finds him sitting alone on the sand, plate balanced on his crossed legs.

“Hey,” Tom says.

Edward makes a surprised sound but does not object when Tom sits down next to him. There are chairs all around them, but the sand is warm.

“There’s too many people,” Ed says. Tom nods. Even here they cannot escape the sounds of the party: boisterous laughter, the clinking of plates, the smash of a glass and a table of Canadians yelling _opa!_ in unison. Tom hands him a bottle of cider.

“Cheers,” Ed says. They eat quietly as they watch the waves. The sand darkens as the waves push further towards them. A flamingo loses its balance in the rising tide and squawks, breaking the silence as they both laugh at the pink bird’s indignant hops towards its brethren.

“It’s hard to imagine people living here,” Tom says. He picks at the grapes with his hands now, popping each one in his mouth. They’re sweet and juicy. He wishes he could go back for the strawberries.

Ed puts his plate down on the sand. A curious crab scuttles towards it. “I feel like I’ve been unhappy everywhere but here,” he says.

Tom’s heart aches for him. “Let’s move here, then. You and I. We’ll leave the world behind and live in paradise.”

“What about your wife?” Ed asks. He winces. “Sorry, I didn’t mean—“

“It’s fine,” Tom interrupts. “I don’t know if ‘unhappiness’ is grounds for divorce, though.”

“Emotional abuse is.”

Tom sighs and sets his plate aside. The crab, unenthused about Ed’s leavings, creeps towards Tom’s plate. They both watch it scuttle across the sand. He thinks of the cup of tea splashing across his chest. He thinks of all the times Elsa poured him bowls of vinegar to soak his burned hands in. 

“It’s not like that. You’ve met her once; I’ve known her for my entire life.”

Ed touches the back of Tom’s hand lightly. “I trust you. I do, but I—“ he pauses while the crab scoots off towards the water, “—I’ve seen this before. And I know how it can fuck with you.” He takes a deep breath and squeezes Tom’s hand. “I didn’t just see it before. It happened. To me.”

Tom flips his hand to offer his friend comfort. “I’m sorry.”

Ed squeezes his hand again. “It was a long time ago.”

There’s a part of Tom that wants to listen. He wants to be told what to do, to be taken by the hand and led down the path to happiness. But nothing good has ever come easy for him before, and listening to Ed is too easy.

“How did you end it?” he asks.

“He died.” Tom draws his knees up to his chest and wraps his free arm around them. He doesn’t let go of Ed’s hand.

“Make her listen to you, Tom. You should be like this all the time.” Ed stands up, finally letting go of his hand.

Tom looks up at him. “Like what?”

Ed just shrugs and smiles. He returns a few minutes later with a plate of fresh strawberries.

That night, Tom dreams.

_He comes home to silence._

_It’s a thick silence, cloying and heavy, and he wonders if it’s the thick, sleepy smoke from Mommy’s pipe that makes the silence hurt so much. The smoke hurts Mommy, Kate said, but Tommy’s seen the way her face lights up when she breathes it in. She’s like the caterpillar from the movie that Bietka showed him last week. She breathes the smoke and asks_ Who are you? _and when Tommy comes to say goodnight she gets mad and Tommy has to run away, just like Alice._

Vinegar is good for the burns _, Kate says, so Tommy keeps a bottle of it under his bed. He shares a room with the babies, so he has to be quiet when he cries or else they’ll wake up and babies need a lot of sleep. He has a bad burn on his hand from yesterday, and today his teacher sent him to the school nurse._ Don’t tell them the truth _, Kate says, and Kate knows a lot because she’s five years older than Tommy and knows what it’s like to grow up when your mommy hurts you when you’re bad._ Other kids don’t have mommies that hurt them _, she said,_ but some kids don’t have mommies at all, so we’re lucky _. When the school nurse covered Tommy’s hand in cold goo and wrapped it up in bandages, he didn’t feel lucky. He did what Kate said though, and told her that he was cooking chicken noodle soup and the pot fell on his hand._

_He made chicken noodle soup yesterday, but the smell made mommy feel sick so she put his hand on the hot burner until he promised to be good. She threw away the soup and Tommy ate crackers and filled a bowl with vinegar and sat in the corner of his room where the babies’ crib shielded him from view while he cried._

_When he comes home to silence like this, sometimes it means mommy is out. Sometimes that means she won’t come back for a few days and Tommy gets to eat chicken noodle soup and the vinegar smell in his bedroom starts to go away. Sometimes it means she comes back with the Mean Man and they close mommy’s door and play games and Kate sends him over to Bietka’s, but only when Bietka’s dad isn’t home._

_Sometimes, when it’s silent like this, mommy is asleep with a belt around her elbow and a syringe hanging out of her arm. Tommy knows how to take the needle out of her arm without making it bleed more and he knows that he should put it on the bathroom counter so mommy can find it when she wakes up. Then he checks on mommy and makes sure that she’s breathing, and if she isn’t, he calls 999 and hides under the slide in the little playground across the street. Kate is always at work and the babies are always with Tommy’s grandma, so it’s just Tommy and mommy at home. He wishes he could go spend time with grandma, but if he goes, who will take care of mommy?_

_Today is one of those days. Mommy is asleep in her bed. She has the pipe out today, and Tommy is glad. The pipe is better for mommy because he doesn’t have to call the ambulance like he sometimes does when she uses the needles. The air in her room is hazy and makes his head feel funny. He opens the window, just a crack, because it’s a nice day outside and he wants mommy to hear the birds when she wakes up. There were two birds outside the building when he came home from school. They’re little brown birds with red bellies, and they sing so pretty._

_The whole apartment is a little bit hazy, so Tommy opens the window in the main room and curls up on the couch with a book that he borrowed from Bietka. She’s almost a teenager, so she reads books that have lots of big words. Tommy doesn’t mind, though, because he likes reading. He saves his receipts from the corner store so he can rip them into strips and bookmark parts he likes, and then he and Bietka can look at them together and she can tell him what the hard words mean. He props the book up against his big, bandaged hand, and starts to read._

_He wakes up when the first plate shatters against the wall. Tommy had been dreaming about sailing on a little boat with Bietka. It was just the two of them, and Bietka was reading Rainbow Fish out loud while Tommy looked at the brightly coloured fish swimming next to their boat. It was a good dream, and he wishes he could go back to it._

_Another plate shatters against the wall._

_Mommy is awake._

_“Mommy,” Tommy says. He gets up off the couch and stands behind it so he can duck if he needs to. She picks up another dinner plate._

_“Mommy, we need those,” he says. She throws it at the wall and it shatters. Tommy flinches. He likes those plates. They only eat off them when Kate cooks. She lets him help by stirring the pot. Tommy knows how to stir the pot because he does it by himself when Kate is at work, but he doesn’t tell Kate that. Kate doesn’t like it when Tommy does grown up things._ You’re a kid _, she always says._ You should go to school and read books _._

_Tommy does go to school and he does read books, but he also makes soup and buys crackers at Tesco across the street and takes mommy’s needles out of her arms._

_Mommy’s feet are bare and she steps on a shard of shattered ceramic. She screams and drops to her knees. More pieces of shattered plate dig into her knees. Tommy comes to help her up, but she pushes him away._

_“Clean this up,” she says, and she stumbles to the bathroom. Tommy gets the broom and sweeps._

_He hears the bath running, and he sweeps faster. The broom is too tall for him to use properly, but he sweeps up all the bits of plate into the dustpan and empties them into the garbage can. It’s almost full. He’ll have to remember to take it down to the dumpster in the morning, even though it’s always heavy and he isn’t tall enough to put the bag in the bin. By the time mommy comes out of the bathroom with a red face and cold eyes, Tommy has put away the broom and dustpan and he points at the floor._

_“It’s all clean,” he says, hoping that this time it will make a difference. He can see the steam pouring out from the tub, and he starts to cry._

_“I’m sorry, mommy,” he cries. “I’m sorry, I cleaned it all up!”_

_“Why did you open my window?” she asks. “I told you not to bother me.”_

_Tommy cries harder. He wants to tell her about the birds, but he can’t get the words out. Mommy comes closer and picks him up. She holds him close like a hug, and then she takes him to the bathroom._

_“No! No, mommy, please! Please don’t hurt me,” he wails, and she sets him down on the counter and rips off his socks and pants._

_“Stop crying,” she says through gritted teeth, and then picks him up under the armpits and dips him in the scalding water._

_He cries and kicks and wails, but the water is deep enough that kicking splashes the hot water up to his chest so he squirms instead and cries until his throat feels hoarse and he wishes he was dead because then he would stop hurting._

_Then mommy picks him up and drops him on the bathroom floor, grabs her purse off the coat rack, and leaves, slamming the door behind her. Tommy lies where she dropped him, feet still burning from the hot water. He counts to ten, then pulls himself to his knees and crawls towards his bed._

_He hopes Kate comes home tonight. He just wants to tell someone about the birds._

He wakes in tears.

Ed’s asleep, passed out cold from exhaustion and sun. The only light comes from the fluorescent glow of the patio lanterns far below them. Tom pulls his knees to his chest and looks out the window. The ocean reflects the sliver of moon in the sky, and the silver crests of waves dance beneath the moon’s pull. He sits like that for what feels like hours, losing himself in the motion of the sea.

“Can’t sleep?” Ed’s voice is rough in the darkness of the room.

“I _was_ sleeping.”

“Hm,” Ed goes, “bad dream?”

“Bad memory.”

“I always dream when I’m away from home.”

“About what?” Talking to Edward is nice. He feels the emotions of the dream fading, though the memory remains untouched.

“The jungle, usually. Kathmandu, sometimes. Other places I’ve been.”

“I’ve never been anywhere,” Tom says. “Tell me about them?”

Tom lays down on his side, tucks his arm under his pillow so he can watch Edward as he speaks.

“I went to the Amazon with my half-brother, Matteo. The first of the Dr. Littles in the family. He has a PhD in anthropology, dedicated his life to studying an Indigenous language no one has heard in decades. I just had my relationship end… badly. Very badly. So when an uncontacted tribe came out of the Amazon speaking a similar lost language to the one he studies, Matteo nearly shit himself. He took me with him to Brazil.”

“He sounds like a good brother.”

“He is,” Edward says ponderously. “It’s a strange relationship, I suppose. I’m my father’s middle child, my mother’s oldest. Too young to grow up with my half-siblings, too old for my full siblings, but they’re all so… successful.”

“I’d say you’re successful,” Tom says. “You’ve published a novel. You’ve written things that _mean_ something.” He’s searched Ed’s name, of course, and it turned up a number of articles written for various news sources.

“I’ve been lucky. Really, I’ve just been riding the success of my siblings. I’ve gone to Mexico with Sanita, Kathmandu with James, America with Hattie… I’ve never done anything by myself.”

“You can’t cheat at life,” Tom says. His eyelids are starting to droop. “I think your life is enviable. More than mine, anyways.”

Edward snorts. “At least you haven’t been alone your whole life,” he says bitterly.

“You’re not alone, Ed. People love you.” After a moment, he says what he’s been meaning to say. “ _I_ love you.”

But Edward does not respond, and Tom prays that he is asleep.

Tom wakes up first and creeps out of the room silently, taking the stairs down to the ground floor café and picking up a pair of iced coffees. He takes the stairs back to the third floor.

Edward is awake; his bed is empty and the shower is running. Tom places a hand on the door to the loo. Beyond it, Edward is naked. In his mind, rivulets of water form uneven rivers that run down the length of his body. He wants to watch him shower. He wants to see the shift of muscles in his back as he raises his arms to shampoo his hair, wants to see the bar of hotel soap trace over his chest, following the trail of hair down until it reaches its terminus: the coarse hair that surrounds the length of his—

Tom presses his forehead against the door. He can’t keep thinking these dangerous thoughts. Sooner or later he’ll slip up and lean in to kiss Ed, or fall to his knees and beg to see him—all of him—just once.

_Would it be so bad?_ a voice whispers in his head. _What are you trying to save?_

His marriage is over. He knows that. There’s nothing left to save. It’s only a question of how much longer he chooses to be a coward, and how violently things will erupt once he finds the courage to ask for a divorce.

In the thirteen years Tom has been married, he had never once thought about cheating on Elsa. He’s never looked at anyone else. He’s never wondered what it would be like to kiss someone else, to lay with them and touch them and be touched by them.

But with Edward, something is different. Ed sees him. Ed knows the person he wants to be, because he can be that man when they’re together. He had a point, back when he visited Tom’s flat—he’s different when he’s at work. He couldn’t place the feeling, but now, with distance as an impenetrable barrier, Tom understands that the strangeness he feels at work is not so much a feeling as much as a lack of one. He isn’t afraid.

The shower shuts off. Tom retreats back to the safety of his own domain and begins moving folded piles of clothing around in his suitcase, pretending to look for something to wear (he’s had every outfit planned since he started packing). Edward emerges from the steam with only a towel wrapped around his waist. He’s using another to dry his hair. Tom tries not to stare, but then Ed turns and Tom is thankful that he decided five minutes ago that it was time to ask for a divorce. It absolves him of most of the guilt that comes like the rush of saliva to his mouth when he notices that Edward Little _has his nipples pierced._ His chest is pale under the dark hair, but the gold bars look so beautiful against the rosy pinkness of his nipples. It’s the most erotic thing Tom has ever seen. He can feel himself blushing.

“Shower’s free,” Edward says.

“Yeah,” Tom says, voice cracking. Ed must have turned around to find his toiletries bag, because he’s combing his hair in the mirror and frowning at his sunburnt nose. In the mirror, he locks eyes with Tom and licks his lips.

Tom ducks into the loo, puts the shower on cold, and stands under it for a long time.

The shower’s relief proves temporary.

“We’re going to the beach,” Edward had said confidently when Tom emerged from the bathroom.

Now, he squirts out another handful of SPF 100 sunscreen and slaps it on his shoulder. They’ve been out on the beach for an hour, and Edward is stubbornly refusing to go inside.

“We’re in Aruba, Thomas Jopson. We’re sitting on the goddamn beach.”

Tom shakes his head. He lowers his sunglasses and looks down at his bare chest. It’s a healthy colour, not at all like the uneven pink splotches that cover Edward’s.

“Let me,” Tom says. He hates watching Ed struggle, twisting his torso in unnatural positions and missing great swathes of skin in the process. Ed hands him the bottle.

“Really, Ed, you should have let me help you from the start.” He doesn’t mention that when Edward first applied sunscreen, he was hiding in the shower willing the uncomfortable heat in his groin away.

“I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable,” Ed mumbles. Up close, Tom can see that the patches of skin that didn’t burn are brown with freckles that he swears weren’t there this morning.

Tom hums. The skin on Ed’s back is warm, and he undertakes his duty with diligence. He’s determined to cover every inch of Ed’s exposed skin with sunscreen for purely altruistic reasons.

“Your hands feel nice,” Ed says. “Cool,” he adds hastily.

“I was holding my drink.”

“Makes sense.”

“We should go find an umbrella. You’re burning.”

“Yeah?” Ed cranes his neck to look at his shoulder.

“You’re getting freckly, too,” Tom rubs a hand over Edward’s shoulder.

Ed wrinkles his nose.

“What? They’re nice. Very charming.”

“I had an ex who hated them. Said they made me look dirty.”

Tom smacks him gently on the shoulder. “Lies,” he says quietly, “all lies. They’re perfect.”

Ed turns back around to face Tom. He has a peculiar look on his face. “I think,” he starts, pausing to watch Tom screw the lid on the bottle of sunscreen. Ed stops, shakes his head. “You’re right. We should get an umbrella.”

Ed lasts another hour on the beach before Tom has to drag him inside to put on a shirt. It’s a blessing and a curse, knowing what lies underneath the pale green linen. They go back to work after lunch, and once or twice Tom is able to slip away and photograph the white sand beaches and the little crabs that scuttle along the beach. It’s another long, satisfying day, and Tom falls asleep right after dinner.

“Wake up.” A gentle hand rocks his shoulder. Tom opens his eyes. It’s night.

“How long was I asleep?” he asks.

“Five hours? I dozed off too, I think. It’s past midnight.”

Tom groans. His sleep schedule is going to be off for days.

“I want to show you something,” Ed says. He doesn’t elaborate.

“Cryptic,” Tom says wryly. He reaches for his camera bag.

“Come on,” Ed says. “Leave your camera. There are some things you can’t photograph.”

Tom follows him out of their room. He’s curious, even more so when Ed leads him to the elevator. He presses the R button; they ascend to the rooftop garden.

The doors slide open, and the light from the elevator spills over the terracotta planters, bathing the carefully landscaped flowers in artificial yellow light. Their sweet smell mixes with the salty air of the ocean.

“I didn’t know this was here,” Tom says. “It’s wonderful.” The elevator doors slide shut, and it’s dark. He can feel the solid presence of Ed’s body close to him. It’s too close, and when the goosebumps rise on his skin he can feel the hair on his arms brush against Edward’s.

“Look up,” Ed says, breaking the spell of seagull calls and waves lapping at the beach below. Tom looks up.

There are no clouds tonight. The black sky is covered in a smattering of stars, some large and bright, some small and dim, as varied in their appearance as the freckles across Ed’s shoulders and back.

“Oh,” Tom breathes. He lets Ed lead him to the deck chairs around the rooftop pool, neck still craned back and looking until he has to shut his eyes to fight the dizziness.

“There’s too much light to see them properly in London,” Ed says. He sits beside Tom on the same chair, stretches out and reclines next to him. Tom doesn’t notice until the heat from Ed’s body makes their skin stick where their arms are pressed together.

“Triangulum,” Ed says, drawing a triangle in the air. “Orion is easy because you can find Orion’s belt, just there. Canis Major is the dog with the bright stars.” He takes Tom’s hand and lifts it to point, to trace out the shape of the stars.

“It doesn’t look anything like a dog,” Tom says. He likes the way Ed’s hand feels around his. The night is warm without the wind, but he moves his leg closer so it brushes against Ed’s.

“You have to use your imagination. See, Taurus, because it has horns.” He traces another series of lines in the air with Tom’s hand, leaning in to get the position right.

Tom wants to capture this moment, not with his camera, but with his whole being. He wants to remember the smell of the hibiscus flowers and the ocean mingling with the scent of soap and sweat on Edward’s skin, the feel of Ed’s hand directing his, drawing pictures in the sky. He teeters on the precipice of something dangerous.

“I’m just a photographer, Ed. You’re the one with the imagination.”

Ed’s hand tightens around his fingers. “Sometimes I wish I wasn’t,” he says. It’s absent-minded, and slips out like an accident.

“Why? What do you think about?”

Ed brings their intertwined hands down to rest on his chest. Tom can feel his heart beat through his shirt.

“I didn’t mean to say—“

“I know you didn’t. I still want to know.”

Edward shakes his head. “Sometimes I wonder if you—“

Ed cuts himself off. Tom chases the words, turning on his side to lean in closer.

Edward’s breath catches in his throat, but his words do not. “I imagine what it would be like to kiss you,” he whispers.

“Oh,” Tom breathes. They’re close enough that he knows Edward can feel his breath on his cheek.

“I would never ask it of you,” Edward says, but he doesn’t move away.

“You don’t have to ask,” Tom says, and presses their lips together. It’s a tentative kiss, coloured with uncertainty and the unspoken presence of Tom’s wife between them. Then he kisses Ed again, and again, and the uncertainty fades and gives way to a desperation to be touched, to be wanted, to be loved, even if just for one night. He kisses harder, and Edward kisses him back, gasping into his mouth when Tom catches his bottom lip with his teeth and licks at the corner of his mouth.

“I’ve wanted you for so long,” Ed pants. Tom rolls off the chair and extends a hand.

“You have me,” Tom says, and they fumble their way towards the elevator.

* * *

He is in love with Thomas Jopson. It’s been fourteen months since Tom came to work at The Mariner, and Edward has been in love with him long enough that it feels like he’s always been in love with Tom.

Tom kissed him. He kissed Tom back.

And now they’re kissing again in the elevator, back down to the third floor where they’re sharing a room and presumably will do more kissing.

Maybe more than kissing. But that doesn’t matter right now. What does matter is how Tom kisses desperately, like he’s afraid Edward will disappear if he doesn’t hold on tight enough; how tightly Tom grips his shoulders; how Edward’s face is wet but he doesn’t know which one of them is crying.

And then the elevator doors open and they stumble out, Tom leading him by the hand but remaining in profile, watching him with bright eyes as they find their way to their room.

When the door clicks closed behind them, Tom is on him, pushing him against the door and fitting his body against Edward’s so there is not an inch of space between them.

“Please,” he whispers. It’s filled with desperation and sorrow and Edward can’t have him like this.

He may be the most awkward man in the world, but at least he’s an honest one.

“I love you,” he says. “I love you.”

Tom stops. Pulls away. Looks at him like he’s speaking gibberish.

“I love you,” Edward repeats. “I need you to know.”

And then Tom asks, “Why?” and Edward’s heart breaks.

He steps back in to hold him, guides Tom’s head to his shoulder, and begins to sway to the song that plays in his head.

“I can never look away from you. You’re gorgeous; that’s how it started. Then I got to know you as a coworker, then as a friend, and I found out that you’re also intelligent and resourceful and kind. You’re my best friend. I want to be with you all the time. When I’m not with you I’m thinking about you. You make me smile more than I’ve ever smiled before and I actually look forward to waking up and going to work because I know I get to see you every day.”

“You’re flattering me,” Tom says flatly.

“If I was trying to flatter you I’d do a much better job.”

Tom laughs, then looks down at his feet, embarrassed.

“I love you,” Edward says again. He touches two fingers to Tom’s chin and raises his head. Looks into his eyes when he says it one last time. “I love you, Tom. If you want things to end here, they will. But I won’t take it back. I won’t apologize. How can I, when you look at me like that?”

Tom’s face is pained. _No_ , Edward thinks, looking deeper. He’s afraid. Afraid that Edward is lying, telling him what he longs to hear. Afraid that Edward is next in the chain of emotional abuse that tortures him every day. He has every right to be afraid.

_The hardest thing to do,_ his therapist had told him after Will died, _is to trust someone after you’ve been hurt_. A _fter all, what is love but handing the deepest, most fragile part of your soul to someone and hoping they will keep it safe?_

“Say it again,” Tom says suddenly. His chin is raised, defiant.

“I love you.”

“I believe you,” Tom answers, and kisses him again.

* * *

His cheek is damp where it’s pressed against Ed’s chest, but Tom does not move. His nudity is comfortable in the heat of the night. They lie on top of the sheets with the fan spinning lazily overhead.

“Tell me what’s going on in the wild imagination of Edward Little,” Tom says. He traces idle circles across Ed’s stomach.

“You don’t want to hear it,” Ed says, but Tom can hear the smile in his voice.

Tom traces a path up Ed’s chest and cups his cheek, turning his face towards him for a kiss. It’s a soft mingling of lips and tongue, and they both pull away smiling.

Edward takes Tom’s left hand and rubs a finger over the wedding ring that sits on his finger. “I’m imagining I’m the one that put that ring there, and this is our honeymoon.”

Tom hums and nuzzles into Edward’s chest. “What was our wedding like?”

“It was small. Outdoors. My parents offered to host it at their estate on Jersey, but we politely declined. We were married in… where were you happiest? In all your life?”

“Here,” Tom answers truthfully. He knows, somehow, that Ed won’t judge him by it.

“Ah, we were married yesterday. A destination wedding to finally get my parents off the island. You wore that pair of tweed trousers that you wore when we went to the Maritime Museum.”

“Those? Really? They were just a lucky find at the second-hand store.”

“Lucky for me, more like. You wore those and a blue shirt, the colour of your eyes.”

“What were you wearing?”

Ed pauses to think. “The suit I wore to the pub when our first cover article was published.”

“You looked very handsome that night.”

Ed runs his hand through Tom’s hair, stopping at the nape of his neck to stroke the back of his hair. “I made an effort that night. I wanted you to notice.”

“I noticed. Keep going.”

“The whole Mariner team was there. Your sister cries-“

Tom cuts him off. “No, no family for me, thanks.”

“ _George_ cries,” Ed corrects himself, “and Mr. Blanky walks you down the aisle, then turns around to walk me down the aisle too. The hotel clerk with the moustache officiates. We get married in the evening, and the party goes on just long enough. We dance together, and our friends toast us, and we cut the cake. It’s an ice cream cake-“

“-with coffee flavoured ice cream?”

“The coffee ice cream cake is cut, and when we kiss, it’s cold and sweet. We drink enough red wine to be loose and dance without being self-conscious, but not enough to get drunk. It’s our wedding night, and I want to carry you upstairs and let you open up underneath me. I promise to take care of you-“

He must feel Tom tense in his arms, then.

_I can’t take care of you forever._

_I’ve taken care of you for twelve years and this is how you treat me? I’m your mother, Tommy!_

_She didn’t take care of you, but I will._

Edward’s voice cuts through the whispers in his head. “I promise to stay with you, through everything that comes our way. I’ll show you what I like, and you’ll show me what you want, and I’ll give it to you. I’ll touch you where you want to be touched—outside, inside, it doesn’t matter—and when we finally consummate our marriage, the pleasure moves between us, bouncing off each other and amplifying until we—us, together-- are the only thing in the universe.”

Tom ignores the prick of tears in his eyes. “I like that,” he says. His voice has grown heavy with sleep. It’s past three in the morning, but he doesn’t want to sleep. He doesn’t want to break the fantasy.

“No one knows us here,” Ed says. “We can pretend, if you like.”

“Yes. I would like that very much.”

* * *

Ed buys a cheap gold ring in town on his way back to the hotel. It would be easier just to wear it back, but he asks for a small brown bag and carries it between his second and middle fingers as he juggles the two plastic cups of iced coffee. His left hand is going numb when he finally reaches their hotel room. He hisses when he tucks the cup into the crook of his elbow—it’s damn cold—and opens the door.

Tom is sleeping. His hair falls across his forehead as he nuzzles his stubbly cheek into the pillow he hugs to his chest. God, Edward wants to be that pillow. With sudden, gleeful clarity, he realizes that he _can_ be that pillow now. He slides both coffees onto the nightstand and toes off his shoes before sliding under the covers with Tom.

“Hrrnnng,” Tom says. It’s the least sexy sound he has ever made, and Edward falls a little bit more in love with him for it.

“Good morning, love,” he says. He kisses Tom on the forehead. It feels so natural, so right, like they’ve been doing this their whole lives.

“Ed?” Tom opens his eyes, sees his face, and smiles.

“I’m here.”

Tom hums happily and rolls onto his side, lifting an arm in invitation. Edward snuggles closer. His beard rasps against the hair on Tom’s chest. It’s a good cuddle. It’s possibly the best cuddle he’s ever had.

“Is this real?” Tom asks him.

“I think this is the most real I’ve felt in a long time.”

Tom smiles against Edward’s hair. “Yeah. Yeah, me too.”

When they wake again, it’s after noon. The ice in the coffees has melted, but they’re still cold. Edward drinks his while Tom shaves, and he sits on the bed in a loose white v-neck tee and watches the tendons shift in Tom’s neck beneath the shaving cream.

“Quit staring,” Tom laughs. “I can see you in the mirror.”

“You stop being so beautiful and I’ll stop staring.” It’s a cheesy and ridiculous line, but Tom smiles at him in the mirror before washing the soap from his face.

“What would you like to do today, my love?” Edward asks. “Go get some lunch? Spend all day in bed? Hold hands and walk down the beach?”

“I want to climb the mountain.”

“Sorry, what?”

“The mountain. Hooiberg. I want to climb it.”

Edward was not expecting this, but he digs through his suitcase for his ugly green trainers that he optimistically tossed in his bag, thinking he’d go for a run along the beach.

“You’re going to drag your fake husband up a mountain on our first date?” Edward asks as he laces up his shoes.

Tom snickers as he rubs sunscreen on his nose. “I think it’s time to admit we’ve been emotionally dating for months.”

Edward remembers the ring. Its brown bag had fallen between the bed and the nightstand, and he fishes it out.

“Ah, I need a hand,” he says, handing the ring to Tom. “Can you put this on my finger for me?”

Tom laughs as he slides his own wedding ring off and onto Edward’s finger. “There.” He nods toward the ring Edward bought, and Edward slides it onto Tom’s hand. Tom is looking at him so softly that Edward doesn’t even mind the big dopey grin spreading across his face.

“I love you,” Tom says. “I know I didn’t say it last night, but I do. The world makes more sense when I’m with you.”

He takes Tom in his arms and kisses him softly. “Let’s go climb a mountain.”

Climbing Hooiberg, to put it bluntly, sucks. There are 662 stairs to the top of the mountain, and Edward feels every single stair individually kick his thighs in the metaphorical balls. Tom is ahead of him, giving Edward a wonderful opportunity to stare at his perfect behind for the first hundred stairs before he has to look down at his lime green sneakers and pretend every step is the last. Every so often he looks up. Tom is sweating through his shirt. Rivulets of sweat drip from his hairline down the back of his shirt, plastering it to his skin. It’s the sexiest thing Edward has ever seen in his life.

Just as he thinks he’s about to keel over and impale himself on a cactus, they reach the top. The view is breathtaking. The winds are strong up here, and Edward throws his head back and lets the breeze dry the moisture off his neck.

“I didn’t think,” Tom pants, “there would be so many damned stairs.” He pulls out a bottle of water and chugs half of it, handing the rest to Edward. It’s warm, but it’s water and he drains the rest of the bottle.

“My arse hurts,” Edward pants in return.

Tom collapses on a flat rock and beckons towards Edward. “I’ll give you an arse massage later. Come here.” Edward drops to his knees and crawls across the brush towards Tom. He crawls onto the rock behind him, spreads his legs so Tom is nestled between them.

“I want to leave her,” Tom says. He leans back against Edward’s chest, and Edward wraps his arms around him, kisses his sweaty neck before resting his chin on Tom’s shoulder. “But I don’t know if I can.”

“Why?” Edward asks. He’s curious. He’s seen enough to know that Tom hasn’t told him the whole truth about the extent of his wife’s emotional abuse. Hasn’t told anyone, probably.

“Guilt, mostly. Fear. She’s all I know. I’m all she knows.”

Edward squeezes him tighter. “Maybe it’s time for a change.”

“It feels selfish. Loving you feels selfish.”

Edward kisses his neck again; once, twice, three times before responding. “There’s at least one other person who is benefitting greatly from your love.”

Tom laughs and turns in his arms, pulling him in to kiss him properly. “I’ve never been so happy,” he admits when he releases him.

“I climbed a mountain for you. I’m in it for the long haul, if you’ll have me.”

Tom takes hold of Edward’s hands and looks him bravely in the eyes. “I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t afraid. But I want to. I want _you._ ”

“Then let’s be together! Let’s be _happy_ together, Tom. After everything we’ve been through, this is our chance at something good.”

Tom licks his lips. He nods, slowly at first, then enthusiastically as his face lights up. “Yeah,” he says, peppering Edward’s cheeks with kisses. “Yes, yes, I want to be with you, I want to have a life with you, I’m so happy when I’m with you.”

“You make me feel safe,” Edward says, and saying it out loud must mean as much to Tom as it does to him because they both freeze and spend a long moment realizing that they have both found what had been lost.

When they make it back to the beach, the sun is setting. Edward is still dripping sweat—skipping out on runs with Tozer has really left a mark on his stamina. There is an empty stretch of beach about half a mile south, and Edward grins as he takes Tom’s hands.

They leave their clothes on the sand. The water, warmed from the sun but refreshing like all ocean water is, splashes around their knees as they run into the waves, then pools around their waists as they wade out further. Edward is the first to dive, dunking his head under the water and surfacing right after. His hair is getting long, and he pushes it back from his face. Tom adds his hands, carding his fingers through the shaggy brown strands and combing it back. He leaves his hands on the back of Edward’s neck and sidles closer. They’re chest to chest in the warm water, the wind blowing cold against Edward’s salt-damp skin. Tom kisses him, body flush against his, and laps the salt from his lips. Then Tom is underwater, still tight against his body and something— _oh, something—_ is touching his prick under the water. Tom surfaces, laughing, and shakes the water from his hair. Another gust of wind makes the hair on his neck stand on end. He shivers. Tom cups a hand, scoops up a handful of warm ocean water. He raises it, letting it trickle from his cupped palm over the back of Edward’s neck. There is no breeze, but Edward shivers again.

* * *

They stop for food at one of the casual local restaurants. They’re not the only ones fresh from the ocean; there is a table of friends on a stag-do still wearing their towels around their shoulders and a booth with a pair of children dripping water all over the wood floor. Tom orders shrimp, Ed orders lobster, and they both order fruity cocktails that are more juice than liquor.

The hike has exhausted Tom, the conversation on top of the mountain even moreso. He looks up from his plate at Edward, who cracks open his lobster tail with vigor and offers Tom the first bite. Tom eats the meat out of his hand, knowing exactly what he’s doing as he licks the taste from Ed’s fingers.

“Christ, Tom,” Ed says, closing his eyes and dropping his napkin over his lap.

Tom smiles down at his plate. “Can we skip dessert? I’d like to have you instead.”

He’s barely through the door when Ed pushes him against the wall, knee working its way between his thighs to rub against him. The door falls shut with a click, but Tom does not hear it. Ed’s mouth is on his, and gone are the sweet, careful kisses from last night. He kisses like he’s starving and Tom’s mouth is the most delicious feast. He pushes his mouth back against Ed’s, giving as much as he takes. The aggression in it is new and Tom likes it. He likes it very much. The chafe of Ed’s beard against his own clean-shaven cheeks is a thrilling reminder of who he is kissing; whose tongue swipes across his teeth, whose wide hand cradles his neck gently.

Tom could kiss Ed for hours. They did last night, after returning to their room. First standing upright, like this, before moving to the bed and moving against each other. Ed had been so patient, so gentle, with him. He had asked before removing each piece of clothing—his or Tom’s—he had asked what Tom liked: if he preferred nibbles to the ear or kisses to the neck; if he liked having his hands in Edward’s hair or if he preferred them on his back; and whether or not his nipples were sensitive. The last question he hadn’t known the answer to until Ed’s hot mouth and wicked, wicked tongue wrapped around one and he bit down lightly. Tom’s back had arched so far off the bed he nearly knocked Ed to the floor.

He’s doing the same now, unbuttoning Tom’s shirt slowly and watching his face for signs of discomfort. Seeing none, Edward pulls Tom towards the bed while pushing the shirt from his shoulders.

“Let me taste you,” Ed says. He climbs on top of Tom, kissing him soundly and Tom hums his agreement. He begins his slow descent downwards: he presses hot, open-mouthed kisses across Tom’s jaw and down his neck, stopping at his collarbone to bite and suck and leave a mark that will be barely visible beneath Tom’s tan; he rubs his nose in the fuzz that grows across Tom’s chest before lapping at a nipple and taking it in his mouth, rolling his tongue around it and making Tom cry out and fist his hands in Ed’s hair; he rests his cheek on Tom’s belly, just above the waistline of his shorts before, with a nod of encouragement from a flushed and panting Tom, sliding them off. Ed traces the outline of Tom’s cock with his lips through his underpants, pressing a kiss to the wet spot on his pants from the leaking of his erection. Ed breathes in deep, lets the tip of his tongue flick out to catch the taste.

“Is this what you want?” Tom asks. He means it seriously; he doesn’t want Ed to feel that he has to pleasure him in any certain way. But Edward moans and rubs his face against Tom’s crotch, and Tom realizes that Edward _loves_ this.

“Tell me?” Tom asks.

“I didn’t get a good enough look last night. I felt it in my hand and it was long and perfect but I need to see. I need to taste you, Tom. Please, it’s all I can think about. I love you and I want to suck your cock.”

“Oh,” Tom breathes, and Ed smiles crookedly. He pulls down Tom’s briefs, catches Tom’s cock in his mouth as it springs free. Ed hums happily around it before pulling back and looking his fill.

“It’s perfect,” he says. He’s transfixed; reverent. And then he licks a broad stripe up the underside and it feels so good Tom’s head lolls back against the bedspread and he has to fight his way back up to his elbows because he needs to watch. Ed licks his cock like a popsicle before swirling his tongue around the head and licking into his slit with the point of his tongue. The sounds Tom is making are indecent, but they’re nothing compared to the wet, happy sounds Ed makes around his cock. He seals his lips around the head, pulling off and then pressing his closed mouth against the slit, relaxing his lips just enough to slide his mouth onto the shaft of Tom’s cock. Ed starts to bob his head. His eyes are closed, but every once in a while he opens them and makes eye contact with Tom over the length of his body. It’s the hottest thing Tom has ever witnessed. Ed takes him deeper and deeper, his own face flushing red from lack of air or arousal—Tom doesn’t know which but Ed is gorgeous like this with his tousled hair and pink nose—and then Tom notices that one of Ed’s hands is between his legs, furiously jerking himself off as he sucks Tom’s cock down to the base.

“Ed,” he whines, and Edward whimpers, thrusting up into his hand. The sound is like gasoline poured on the fire burning in his belly. “Look at you,” he whispers. “Look at you.”

Ed looks up. His soft brown eyes are covered with a sheen of tears but they shine dark with lust and desperation. Ed moans around Tom’s cock, and it’s hot and wet and tight and the vibrations push Tom so close to the edge he doesn’t have time to get the words out before he’s coming in Ed’s mouth and slamming a fist down on the comforter with the other lodged between his teeth to keep him from alerting the entire floor of his ecstasy.

Ed pulls off and wipes his soiled right hand on his shirt.

“Any good?” he asks.

“I think I’m dead. I think you killed me.” Tom answers, supine on the sheets.

“That’s the feedback a man likes to hear.” Edward strips off his shirt and wipes the mess from his chin. “Be right back.”

Tom sits up. “Come here.”

Ed gestures to the loo. “I’m going to brush my teeth.”

Tom rolls off the bed. On wobbly knees, he marches up to Edward and smashes their mouths together.

“Mmm,” Ed says. Tom licks across the seam of his lips and pushes his tongue into Ed’s mouth. He can taste the pineapple from their fruity dinner drinks underneath the bitter taste of himself. On Ed, he finds he likes it.

With their lips still touching, Tom murmurs, “Can you teach me how to suck you off?”

“It takes a lot of practice,” Ed smiles against his lips.

“I look forward to it.”

“Mmm, shower?”

Tom wrinkles his nose. “Bath. I can hardly stay standing.” He pulls away to go run the tap.

“I’m going to pretend that’s because of my incredible blowjob and not because we climbed a mountain today.”

Edward tosses his dirty shirt into the corner of the room and follows Tom to the bath.

The next morning, Tom calls the hotel restaurant and makes a reservation for two.

“For my husband and I,” he says. “It’s our honeymoon.” He smiles when he says it. It doesn’t feel like a lie. He’s going to spend the entire day in bed with Ed, committing every inch of him to memory. He wants to touch him all over: run his fingers through the fuzz on Ed’s chest; nuzzle his face into his shoulder; taste the skin that stretches over the crest of his hips. He wants to learn how to be a lover worthy of praise, to make Edward gasp and moan and laugh while Tom pleasures him. Above all, though, he wants to curl up in Ed’s arms and watch TV, or talk about boats, or read a book; anything, as long as he’s within arm’s reach.

Tom is very aware that he has never felt this way before. He thought he loved Elsa, once, but for all the good times they shared he can’t remember one where he felt this much like himself. Marrying her made sense, and that was what he wanted. He wanted to let Kate move on, to stop holding her back, but now he wonders if he just passed from Kate’s hands to Elsa’s.

“You grew up too fast,” Kate had said once, before she stopped answering his phone calls. “You’ve taken care of people your whole life, but you never learned how to take care of yourself.”

Tom hangs up the phone and rolls over, straight into Ed’s bare chest.

“Mmph,” he says, pretending to struggle.

Ed’s arms wrap around him and hold him close. They wrestle lazily, rolling over each other on the mattress and laughing until Tom is on his back and Ed’s head is tucked against his shoulder.

“Dinner is at seven, Mr. Little,” Tom says.

“What should we do until then, Mr. Little?” Ed answers.

“I’m quite comfortable right here.”

“We could rent a boat,” Ed ponders. “And then make out on the boat.”

Tom hums. “That sounds nice. Or we could spend all day in bed?” He leans in close to whisper in Ed’s ear, “I want to suck your cock.”

Ed groans. “Alright, I’m convinced. At least buy a bloke breakfast first?”

Tom pushes his face into Edward’s hair, smiling into it. “Let’s go into town. We’re going to need a full breakfast, yeah?”

They stay in bed for the rest of the day, languidly tracing fingertips over bare skin, mapping the topography of each other that is becoming delightfully familiar.

(A kiss to the inside of the thigh leaves Ed breathless; teeth tugging at an earlobe makes Tom arch up into waiting hands; slow strokes to the back of Ed’s neck make his eyes go hazy as he nuzzles closer.)

“I love you,” Ed gasps when he comes. “I love you,” he says, and he tugs on Tom’s hair to bring him closer, licking into his mouth to taste himself.

After, when they resume their position of Edward on his back with Tom tucked into his side, hands never leaving each other’s skin, Edward says, “I wish this was real.”

Tom looks up, concern creasing his features. “This is real. Isn’t it?”

Edward realizes his mistake. “No, I just meant that I want this—“ he gestures to their entwined bodies on the bedspread—“to last forever. I want to be your man.”

Tom’s eyes shine like the sea.

“I’d like that.”

In the elevator on their way down to dinner, Tom leans over and whispers in Edward’s ear.

“After dinner, I want you to fuck me like it’s our wedding night.” He pulls back. The mirrored walls of the elevator reflect the image of someone he doesn’t recognize. The clothes are his, the hair is his, but the look on his face is confident, flirtatious. Seductive, from the way Ed flushes and crushes their mouths together.

He pulls away and against Tom’s lips he murmurs, “Anything you want.”

They sit like a couple, thighs pushed together in a corner booth. The flickering candle on their table casts a dim glow that makes Ed’s smile sparkle against his shadowed skin. Tom stares too long and Ed catches him. He doesn’t look away; he never has to look away again.

After dinner they’re brought a slice of cherry cheesecake with _Congratulations!_ written out in chocolate sauce. They feed each other spoonfuls of cake and cherries, and their waitress offers to take a photo with Ed’s phone.

“It’s perfect,” Ed says when he looks at the screen. He turns the phone to show Tom.

Tom doesn’t recognize himself in the photo. He’s tanned, skin darker than Edward’s, and he’s smiling so hard the laugh lines that he had long thought disappeared crease his face. He touches his cheeks, wondering if it might be a shadow.

“They only show up when you laugh,” Ed says. “They’re beautiful.”

They stop at the little convenience store in the hotel lobby to buy condoms, lubricant, and a pair of chocolate bars to eat later.

“I want to lick the chocolate off your fingers,” Tom says quietly at the checkout. Ed says nothing as he pays—the only sign that he heard him is the flush on his neck, barely visible under his sunburnt skin.

* * *

They kiss in the elevator before the doors slide shut, giving Edward three floors worth of time to chase the taste of cherries in Tom’s mouth. He looks nervous, so Edward presses him against the wall of the elevator and holds his hand when he kisses him again.

“I love you,” he says. He’s saying it too often, he’s sure, but it’s as heartfelt as it was the first night and it continues to make Tom smile so big his eyes sparkle and the corners of his mouth crease, and each time it’s still a thrill to be responsible for such a beautiful thing. He feels like Michelangelo, except Tom is more exquisite than a hundred Sistine Chapels.

The elevator dings and the doors slide open. He’s still holding Tom’s hand so he waits for him to stand beside him so they can walk together instead of Edward leading him to their room. Tom is biting his lip. It’s the first time Edward has seen him do it and he wonders if Tom picked up the habit from watching him.

“Everything alright?” he asks as the door unlocks and he pushes it open.

Tom nods. “Yeah,” he says. “Nervous, for some reason.”

Edward speaks before he thinks. “Yeah, me too. But we can talk about it and decide what we want and what we’re comfortable with doing, and--”

But the door closes and it’s just him and Tom, separated from the rest of the world and Tom is looking at him with pale blue eyes and saying “I want to feel you inside me” and Edward’s legs turn to jelly. He has to wrap himself around Tom for support as much as for the wet, messy kiss that Tom pulls him into.

“Please,” Tom says, “like our wedding night.”

“Tom,” Edward gasps. Tom’s hands have found their way beneath the waistband of his trousers and long fingers dig into his arse.

“Tom _what?”_ he whispers.

“ _Oh,_ ” Edward moans helplessly when a hand relocates itself to the front of his pants, stroking gently up and down the length of his cock through his briefs. “Tom—“

“Say it,” Tom says lowly against his throat. He pinches Edward’s arse and he jerks his hips forward, pressing further in Tom’s waiting hand. “Say it, Ed. Tell me I’m yours.”

“My Tom,” he whispers against Tom’s mouth.

“Yours.”

* * *

Tom has never done this before. His confession, at least, forces them to slow down.

“Oh,” Ed says. “I thought…” he trails off.

“What?”

“Sex toys? Maybe?” Ed shrugs.

“I’d like to try,” Tom says as he looks away, blushing. “Obviously, since I asked you to… you know.”

“Penetrate you?”

Tom presses his lips together. “Yeah.”

“I want that,” Edward says, sitting beside him on the bedspread, “but if it was our wedding night I wouldn’t do anything new that might make either one of us uncomfortable.”

“I’ve made things awkward, haven’t I?”

Ed throws an arm around his shoulders and pulls him in, pressing their temples together. “Not at all. We’ll sort it out together, yeah?” Tom nods, and remembers that he is safe here.

The compromise they reach, thinks Tom, is much better than anything he could have thought up himself. His back arches off the bed as Ed twists his finger and pulls it out slowly before adding a second finger and pushing them slowly back inside. Tom’s breath catches in his throat as his body yields and Ed’s fingers slide in to him without resistance. It’s not what he imagined it would feel like; it’s better. After the initial tensing muscles and the sweet coaxing of slippery fingertips, Tom finds himself relaxing into the warm, full feeling inside him, and he has never been so aroused in his life. Every touch inside him feels like it’s setting off a thousand neurons, and he writhes and moans on the bed as Edward brings him closer and closer to the edge. Any trace of self-consciousness had evaporated when Ed had said _I’m going to finger you and then I’m going to ride you until we both come_ and when Ed looks up from where he kneels with one of Tom’s legs over each shoulder, Tom looks back.

“Close?” Ed asks, cheeky grin plastered across his face. Tom can only groan. It turns into a long, drawn-out moan as Ed pulls his fingers out and licks up the caramel flavoured lube that slicks the skin around Tom’s hole and dripped over his thighs.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Tom whines. He feels so neglected without the pleasure of Ed’s hands on him.

Ed flops down beside him on the pillows and kisses him. He tastes like caramel.

“I need a breather,” he says, sliding an arm under Tom’s head and running a hand through the hair on his chest. “And a chance to fully appreciate how gorgeous you are.”

Tom swats lazily at him. “Not fair.”

The cheeky grin is back. “I’ll finger you again after I ride you. You’ll like it, I promise.”

Tom punches him lightly in the ribs. “I’ve had sex before, Ed. I know what it feels like.”

He retracts that statement four minutes later when Ed sinks down on his cock and leans back on his hands against Tom’s thighs, body laid bare before him. The light glints off the bars through his nipples. Tom pushes himself up so he can take one of them into mouth, kissing and sucking as Ed circles his hips and holds Tom’s head against his chest.

“Tom,” Ed pants. Tom takes one of the beads on the end of the barbell between his teeth and tugs lightly. The effect is immediate: Ed arches his back and lets out a breathy _ah_ that goes straight to Tom’s cock.

He does it again, and again, interspersing soothing licks and sucks and kisses against Ed’s nipple before pulling at the piercing again. Each time, Ed has the same reaction, pushing himself closer and closer to Tom. Finally, Edward breaks.

“ _Fuck_ , Tom, let me move, _please_!”

Tom pulls back to run his hands down Edward’s broad back. They settle on his hips, and he plants his feet on the bed to give Edward something to brace against.

Ed mutters a sarcastic _thank you_ that makes Tom shake with suppressed laughter.

“What?”

Tom shakes his head, stifling a flurry of embarrassing giggles.

“Why are you laughing? Do I have a—“ Ed lifts a hand to his face and touches his nose.

Tom laughs harder, suppressed giggles erupting out of him. Then Ed starts laughing, but with each laugh he tightens around Tom’s cock and Tom makes a small, pathetic sound that makes Ed laugh harder. Their laughter eventually gives way to Ed lifting his hips and sliding up and down the length of Tom’s cock with a look of sheer unadultered bliss on his face while Tom thrusts up to meet his hips with his own. He can feel his face contort in bliss, but Ed doesn’t laugh at him so much as look completely in awe of him.

“It good?” he asks, grinding his arse against Tom’s hips.

“So good. I’ve never felt— _ah_ \--never felt so good before.” He squeezes Ed’s thighs. “’S it good for you?”

Ed gives a blissful sigh. “So much better than by myself.”

“By yourself?”

Ed looks away, but when he says, “I’ll tell you about my dildo collection, but you have to fuck me while I do it,” he looks back coyly and pulls off of Tom.

He ends up on his back with Tom on top of him, thrusting into him with his ankles hooked behind Tom’s head.

He thought Ed was joking, but in between soft sounds of pleasure, Edward talks.

“My favourite one is about the same girth as you, but not as long. When I’m on my hands and knees, I can hit my prostate with it every time. I’d like to use it on you one day. Use it to open you before I fuck you like you want me to.”

Tom makes a strangled sound.

“Or I can slide a weighted plug in you, keep you filled and heavy while you fuck me because you’re— _fuck, right there, Tom. Right there!_ —you’re so good at it and I never want you to stop. Oh, a little harder and I’ll—“ Ed’s rambling is cut off as he throws his arms around Tom’s neck and kisses him. He’s nearly bent in half, but he barely looks like he feels it. “Yes, kiss me again, Tom. Fuck, suck on my neck and I’ll come on your cock,” Ed says through clenched teeth, and Tom can’t think of single reason not to listen to him. He leans down and thrusts in harder, finding a place on Ed’s neck to seal his mouth against and suck a blossom of red. On instinct, he bites down as he thrusts in hard and Ed throws his head back and shudders, mouth forming a tight ‘o’ (reminiscent of a goldfish, though Tom will take that comparison to the grave) as he spurts hot between their bellies.

Tom pulls out slowly, peels off the condom and tosses it in the trash.

“You could have kept going, yeah?” Ed says, laying like a starfish across the bed. “I don’t mind getting fucked until I’m overstimulated and begging for mercy.”

Tom blinks twice. “I’ll keep that in mind.”

“C’mere, let me at least finger you while I suck you off.”

Tom scoots closer and, true to his word, Ed slides down the length of his body, wraps his lips around his cock, and slides a finger into his slicked-up hole. It is a shameful 90 seconds until the embers inside Tom’s belly twist and ignite and he comes in Ed’s mouth.

Ed pulls himself back towards the headboard and, with a sloppy kiss to Tom’s cheek, passes out.

(Tom shakes him awake a half hour later and drags him to the bathroom to wash up. It isn’t late enough to sleep, not with it being their last night in Aruba. So Edward puts on Titanic again, this time watching it with Tom’s head resting on his shoulder and their fingers twined together on top of the blankets. Tom makes it through the movie this time and they fall asleep together, hands still clasped.)

* * *

The morning after is a rush of quick kisses exchanged when they pass each other in the panic of packing. Tom doesn’t want to go home; dread coils and rears in his stomach like a snake about to strike.

Even on the plane as Ed dozes against his shoulder, he is struck with vivid images of a domestic life together. Maybe they’re returning from their honeymoon; maybe just a vacation. Maybe one of Ed’s friends (who would become his friends, because isn’t that how things are supposed to go?) had a destination wedding and they’re returning from the bliss of vacation to ordinary life.

A life with Edward would be extraordinary.

Tom imagines him in his flat, which seems a little bit brighter, a little bit cleaner with Ed sitting at the kitchen table, waiting for Tom to serve dinner. It wouldn’t be fancy—it couldn’t be, with Tom cooking—but Edward would eat every bite and thank him for cooking, insisting that he do the washing up. Then they would curl up in front of the TV together and watch Ed’s favourite program or whatever colourful anime DVDs Eddie Hoar had thrust upon him at work. They could share a shower before bed, trade kisses under the warm water that grow hotter and more urgent before tumbling out of the lavatory and into bed. The memory of last night tingles up Tom’s spine; the thrill feels like Edward’s fingers as they traced a path up and down his back when he holds him. He smiles fondly at the man asleep on his shoulder. Ed’s still wearing Tom’s wedding band.

He hopes he forgets to give it back.

But the rings don’t change anything; Tom is married to someone he doesn’t love and the guilt of the impending confrontation eats away at his heart.

“What are you thinking about?” Ed mumbles sleepily.

Tom kisses his temple. “Betrayal.”

And then they get off the plane.

Ed’s twitchy. He started biting his bottom lip when they started the descent, and Tom wanted to ignore it, wanted to pretend that everything is going to be okay.

Ed’s quiet as they walk towards the baggage carousel. He’s not silent; when Tom makes idle conversation he answers back, but he’s tense. Tom wants desperately to rub the stress from those shoulders; he wants to dig his thumbs into Ed’s shoulders where the freckles now appear dark and thick across his tanned skin.

They stop.

“I think we should take some time,” Ed says. “Spend a bit of time apart and think about what we want to do about--“ he stops, and instead gestures between himself and Tom.

_I want you,_ Tom thinks. He doesn’t say it. Instead he nods and tries to think of a hundred reasons why Edward is right. He gets to two before he leans over and kisses Ed. The first bag hits the carousel with a _thump._

“I don’t regret it,” Tom says when he pulls away. Ed’s face is flushed red and he smiles stupidly at Tom, all stress disappeared from his features. They wait for their bags with their fingers twined together.

With suitcases in hand, they get on the train.

“What do we do now?” Tom asks quietly. They’re standing chest to chest in the packed carriage. Ed is close enough to kiss, but he doesn’t. The rumble of the underground is too familiar, too much like real life.

The train passes through a tunnel. Ed’s hand finds his own in the dark.

“Either you tell her, or you don’t.”

Edward’s car is parked where he left it in the visitor’s lot outside.

“Come up. I’ll make you coffee,” Tom says. He doesn’t want to be alone. Worse, he doesn’t want to be alone with Elsa. His heart is still soaring; he’s going to say something stupid, make things worse.

Edward nods.

They hold hands in the elevator. Ed bites his lip; Tom taps his free hand against the wall. The elevator doors slide open, and Tom is so surprised he forgets to let go of Ed’s hand.

There are four police officers standing outside the door to Tom’s flat.

“Excuse me,” Tom says, “this is my flat.”

One of the officers looks past him to Edward. “Are you Edward Little?”

Edward nods.

“Come inside.” He opens the door to Tom’s flat and gestures for them to follow.

“I didn’t write this,” Edward says.

The cop holding the note slams it down on the table. Behind her, the doll in the checkered shirt and cowboy hat stares with blank, glassy eyes.

“Are you in a secret relationship with Thomas Jopson?” she asks. He looks over at Tom, sitting on the couch with his head in his hands.

“Um, yes?” Edward answers.

“And you’re aware he’s married?”

“Yes.”

“Have you met Elisabeth Jopson?”

“Yes.”

“Is this your writing?” She shows him the note again. It looks like his writing. The juvenile, loopy script scrawls across the top half of the paper. _I’ll kill you,_ it says. _I’ll kill you so I can be with Tom._

“I didn’t write this.”

“Did you murder Elisabeth Jopson?”

“ _What?_ ” Tom jumps to his feet and is held back by a uniformed arm. “We just got back into the country!” He’s pushed back down on to the couch. “Where is she?”

“Missing,” the cop says. Tom’s face pales. The sudden, high-pitched chiming from Edward’s phone makes them all jump. Before the cops can stop him, Tom answers it and puts it on speaker.

“Edward! I fucked up, man,” Tozer says. “Where are you?”

Edward looks at the crowd of cops. “I’m at Tom’s.”

“I’m coming over.”

“Now’s not a good time, Sol.”

“Dude, there’s a bomb squad outside your flat and I think it’s my fault.”

The cop interrogating Edward nods. Edward gives Tozer the address.

“Right,” she says. “Go sit with your… mistress. Mister? Whatever.”

Edward scowls. “They’re getting divorced,” he mutters, but takes a seat next to Tom and holds his hand while they wait for Tozer.

Tozer shows up in a baggy grey sweat suit with a bag of Fritos and a case of beer.

“Woah,” he says as the cops converge and march him to the kitchen table. “D’you mind?” he asks, gesturing to the bag of Fritos. Without waiting for an answer, he rips open the bag and munches a handful. “Right. So, I had this boyfriend,” he says, eyes narrowing as he investigates the cops for signs of discomfort. Finding none, he continues. “His name is Cornelius. A few nights ago, we were having a nice night in when loverman over here—“ he points to Edward, “—sent me a picture of the guy he’s been in love with for months tucked up in bed beside him. They looked so damn cute together I had to show Cornelius. We’d both been following the sad saga of Edward Little’s love life since we got together, y’know? Then Cornelius had a great idea to put up a big ‘congratulations’ banner up in his flat. All in good fun, yeah? I have the spare key for Eddie’s flat so I lent it to Cornelius and then that was it! He dumped me. Said he was off to Paris for a dirty weekend with a MILF.” Tozer sticks his hand back into the Frito’s bag. He chews solemnly. A rogue manly tear slides down his cheek.

“I don’t know why he did it, but I think he filled your flat with thrift-shop pressure cookers and explosive shit instead of a ‘congratulations’ banner.”

“Can I see the note?” Tom asks. It’s wrapped in plastic, and the cop hands it over carefully.

“Careful, it’s written in pencil. Don’t smudge it.”

Tom frowns at the writing. “Edward is left handed,” he says, handing the note back. “His hand drags when he writes. The words would be smudged. And, like I said, we _just_ got back to England.”

“What are you saying?” the lead cop asks.

Tom raises an eyebrow. “He didn’t write it. It must be some sort of mistake, or… is Cornelius right handed?”

Tozer nods. “We used to blow shit up in my yard for fun, too. He had a lot of explosives for someone who works at a hospital.”

The cop makes a frustrated sound. “Let’s go down to the station.”

The _ding_ ing sound of Tom’s ringtone interrupts her. He answers it, puts it on speaker, and holds onto Edward’s arm.

“Tom! It’s Sophy. Me and Francis were driving by Edward’s and it’s surrounded by cop cars? And a bomb squad? Where are you guys? Is Edward okay?”

“Um, not really?” he answers.

Edward squeezes Tom’s hand. “I’ll be fine. Can you come stay with Tom? There’s some crazy shit happening and I need to know he’s safe.”

“We’ll be right over!” Francis yells.

“You don’t need to yell, darling, it’s on speaker,” Sophy says to Francis. “Sorry, we’ll be right over.”

Edward leans over and kisses Tom, audience of police officers be damned. He loves him and he’s not ashamed.

“I’ll come back,” he says.

“You had better,” Tom says, and kisses him again. “I love you.”

Edward leaves with Tozer and the four cops, and Tom is left alone.

He still hasn’t moved from his spot on the couch when Sophy calls him from outside his building.

“I’ll come down,” he says. He moves as if in a trance, ignoring Mr. Pryor as he sticks his head out into the hallway and shouts something after him as the elevator doors slide closed. Tom is aware of Francis pushing the door open and wrapping him in a tight hug, then being pushed into Sophy’s arms.

“Come on, lad. Tell us what happened.”

“I’m in love with him,” Tom says stupidly. “I fell in love with Ed and I need to get divorced.”

Francis exhales loudly. “I meant what happened tonight.”

“ _Francis,_ ” Sophy hisses.

“No to devalue this major discovery about yourself. Very important thing, understanding yourself.”

Tom waits until the door is shut and locked behind them before returning to his spot on the sofa and explaining what happened to Francis and Sophy. He doesn’t mention his and Ed’s affair; from the look on Sophy’s face, she already knows.

“Do you think it’s him?” Francis asks his wife gruffly.

Sophy nods. “I wouldn’t put it past him. He can’t get to you directly so he targets everyone close to you?”

Tom looks from Sophy to Francis. “Cornelius is E.C.? But what about Elsa? She’s…” he trails off as Tozer’s words come back to him. _He had a lot of explosives for someone who works at a hospital._ Tom is on his feet and rooting through Elsa’s things before he can finish the thought. She couldn’t be involved. It’s not a conspiracy; it’s just a misunderstanding with Tozer’s crazy ex-boyfriend. But he needs to be sure.

“Can we cover up these dolls?” he hears Francis mumble from the living room. He finds Elsa’s laptop computer under the bed and opens up the browser, scanning the internet history for their banking website. The pin number stalls him; he’s so deep in thought the crash in the other room barely registers. He looks up when he hears Francis yell, “Get rid of these motherfucking haunted dolls!” and locks eyes with Marta the Princess doll. He knocks her over. There, on the bottom of her shoe, is a four number serial code.

It works.

This is the first time Tom has ever seen their banking information. Elsa has always taken care of it, ever since they were first married and Tom received his first credit card.

“I know how to manage money,” she had said, like she was doing him a favour. He had trusted her.

But there is no debt. They’re not wealthy by any means, but there is money sitting in a savings account. It’s not enough for a telephoto lens, nor is it enough to raise a family on, but it’s enough that Tom’s habit of buying a single chocolate bar at the Tesco checkout shouldn’t have caused the fights it had. He sits on the bed, shocked and hurt and confused. He knows what he’s going to see before he clicks on Elsa’s credit card statement.

The last seven transactions were made in Paris.

“Fuck,” he says out loud. He doesn’t know what it all means yet. He wishes Ed were here to help him make sense of it all.

Then he sees a flash of purple, and a Twirl bar hits him in the chest.

“Brought snacks,” Blanky says, biting into a strip of beef jerky. Tom starts crying.

After the shock of making Tom cry with a chocolate bar subsides, Blanky wraps him up in a quilt and shoves him back to the living room.

“My wife is with E.C. in Paris,” he announces. The room is silent.

“That is so fucked up,” Sophy finally says.

“I think…” Blanky starts. “I think we should order curry.”

Francis nods sagely. “Is there a good place around here, Tom?”

Tom shakes his head. “I don’t know. I’ve never ordered anything before.”

A disappointed Blanky stands up and begins to root around the cupboards, dragging a chair over and standing on it to peer inside.

“Are you looking for a phone book, Thomas? Really?” Francis throws a Cheeto at him. “We young people use our Blackberry web browsers to find curry shops.”

Sophy catches Tom’s eye and shakes her head fondly.

“Oi, there is a phone book in here!” Blanky holds the floppy paper brick triumphantly. “And look! An address book! I haven’t seen one of these in decades!”

Tom makes a surprised sound. “I’ve been looking for that!” Blanky tosses it down and Tom catches it. It was the first thing he bought with his own money, back when he was sixteen and working his first job at Tesco. It was on the clearance shelf at a fancy paper shop and he had fallen in love with the smooth, jade green leather cover. He had updated it religiously until it had disappeared from his bedside table a couple years ago. He thought it had fallen into the trash, but now he knows better than to assume anything was an accident.

Francis and Blanky crowd together on the sofa to find the shadiest sounding curry shop in Marylebone (“the shadier the name, the better the food”) but Sophy watches him open the book and run his fingers over the thick pages. He opens it to the ‘M’ tab. Kate’s number is stark and black against the off-white paper. He remembers writing it down after Elsa and Kate’s last fight. It’s the only entry written in pen.

“Tom?” Sophy asks softly. He doesn’t answer, just lays the book down on the counter and unlocks his phone, scrolling through his contacts to find Kate McCullough. The number on his phone screen is one number off from the one written in his address book.

“Your sister?” Sophy asks. Tom nods. “Call her.”

She pulls him by the hand into the bedroom and sits him down on the bed. “Call her,” she says again, and shuts the door as she leaves.

He dials the number written in black pen.

It rings three times.

“Hello?” He hasn’t heard her voice in over two years, and the sound of it makes his chest fill with emotion.

“Kate?” he asks. His voice is small. “It’s Tommy.”

“Tommy? _My_ Tommy?”

He slides off the bed to sit on the floor against the wall. He bites the tears back, but they fill his eyes and overflow, tracing hot trails down his face and dripping onto his chest.

“I’m sorry, the phone number was wrong and I couldn’t find my address book and I didn’t think—I couldn’t have imagined—God, I miss you so much. I love you. I miss you. I’m sorry.”

“My Tommy,” she repeats with awe. Her voice sounds thick; it’s the first time Tom has ever heard her cry. “Are you okay?”

The sound he makes is somewhere between a sob and a laugh. “No. No, but I think I will be. I know what I need to do to be happy. And I want to be happy.”

“You deserve it, Tommy. Come stay with us if you need to. Or if you want to. Please. You need—you need to meet your niece.”

Tom’s heart leaps into his throat. “I have a niece?”

“Yeah,” Kate says through her tears. “And a nephew on the way.”

“Oh my G—yes, of course I’ll come. I’ll come next week, if I can.”

“We’re in Devon. Write down the address, yeah?”

Tom fishes around for a pen and writes the address, neat as he can, below her phone number in his address book.

“I’m so sorry,” he says again. “For everything. For not listening to you when I should have.”

“Hey, none of that, Tommy. We’ll talk about it later, okay? I’m on maternity leave, so come by any time. I want to see my little brother.”

“I will. I promise.”

The front door slams and he flinches. He can hear Francis say his name through the closed door, and he reluctantly says his goodbyes to his sister, promising again to come visit as soon as he can.

“Tom!” Edward barrels through the door as soon as he opens it and knocks him backwards with the force of his hug. “Cornelius is E.C.! He’s been trying to get to Francis through us for months! He stabbed John and apparently put Tom Hartnell’s brother in the hospital so thank god you’re okay—“ Ed’s talking so fast he can barely make out the words, but he must be cleared of suspicion because he’s here and Tom is filled with a bright burst of happiness and knocks their teeth together as Ed keeps talking and Tom leans in to kiss him.

“Nice,” Blanky says. “I knew they’d end up together.”

“No you didn’t, you daft sod,” Francis says. “I did, though.”

The police officer standing in the doorway clears their throat. “Mr. Jopson, a moment, please.” The officer pulls out a photo of Neil Hickey. “Do you know this man?”

“He’s my wife’s friend. They work at the hospital together. They’re in Paris. Together.”

They show it to Tozer. “And this is your ex-boyfriend?” Tozer nods. He has somehow acquired another bag of Fritos and opens them. His grey sweatshirt has an orange handprint across the chest.

He doesn’t bother with his hands anymore, just tips the shiny bag upside down and pours fluorescent orange Flamin’ Hot Fritos into his mouth like a Gatorade.

The officer sneezes and passes the picture around.

“That’s the man that stabbed John,” Sophy confirms.

“Yes, he’s the man who tried to blow up the office,” Blanky adds.

“He’s not even that good of a writer,” Francis grumbles. “Of course I wouldn’t hire him.”

“I think that’s all we need,” the officer says, and they nod a good night and leave.

Tom breathes a sigh of relief when the door closes and he is left with his friends.

“Will you stay tonight?” he asks Edward quietly.

“Only if we cover up the dolls in the bedroom.”

“Did you say dolls? There are _more?_ ” Francis recoils in horror. Tom just notices now that Francis and Blanky have piled all the expensive porcelain dolls they could find around his broom in what looks like a funeral pyre.

“They worship the stick,” Blanky explains before bursting into a round of raucous laughter. Francis joins in.

“The stick!” he wheezes. “Christ, it’s not even funny!” He snaps a picture on his Blackberry. “I’m going to send this to J.C.. He’ll make it a meme.” He pronounces it ‘may-may’.

The laughter builds in his belly, a deep, giddy feeling that could only form from a mixture of relief, happiness, and sentimentality. Tom laughs.

He laughs for all the time he missed with Kate. He laughs for all the times he should have laughed at work with Francis and Sophy and Blanky and John and George and Eddie. He laughs now, because he knows that soon, these four walls will be devoid of laughter when he talks to Elsa and tells her he’s leaving. Most of all, he laughs because Ed’s beard tickles his cheek when he wraps an arm around his waist and pulls him close.

“It’s going to be okay,” Tom says, and for the first time in his life, he believes it.

* * *

Tozer is passed out in the bedroom in a Frito-induced coma. His snoring is the only sign of life; he’s sprawled on his front across the bed and Tom has chosen to let him be. Edward doesn’t think he sleeps in the bed much anymore.

He’s sitting next to Tom on the sofa, arm around his shoulders. It doesn’t feel like he thought it would. He catches a glimpse of a familiar book under the coffee table and kicks it gently with a socked toe.

“I didn’t know you read it,” he says. The copy of his novel topples onto the floor, landing on its spine.

“It felt like an invasion of privacy,” Tom says. “I didn’t want to make you uncomfortable.”

Of course he knows it was semi-autobiographical. Tom knows him in a way no one else does.

“I’ll tell you about it. About him,” he says. “Sometime soon.”

“But not now.”

“No, not now.”

Tom pulls away to look at him. “What do you want?” he asks gently. It isn’t accusatory; it’s curious. Edward answers honestly.

“I want to be with you. That’s all I know. I don’t know how to love you. I haven’t loved anyone in years. But I want to be good for you. I want us to be happy.”

“I am happy with you,” Tom says. He leans back in, rests his head on Ed’s shoulder. “But I can’t shake the guilt. I promised her—“

“Has she kept her promises to you?”

“What?”

Ed draws him in closer. “People who love you don’t hurt you.”

He thinks about Will. He thinks about the arguments near the end, and how long it took him to finally find the courage to confront him. He thinks about the first time he said it out loud. _I think I’m in a bad relationship,_ he had said to his father. After a year of pretending he could salvage something, everything had unravelled in a day.

“It’s not her fault,” Tom says. “She had a rough childhood. I was supposed to make things easier for her. For both of us.”

Ed holds him. Tom’s shoulders are tense. His eyes are open, staring at the remote control on the couch next to them.

“It’s not your fault,” Ed whispers. He had to repeat it again and again after Will died. On bad days, it loses all meaning and becomes just another stupid exercise his therapist still makes him do fifteen years later. But on days like today, it means _something,_ and he hopes Tom knows that he means it.

Tom’s shoulders shift under his arm, and he buries his face in Ed’s neck.

“Edward,” he says quietly, “I think I’m in an abusive relationship.”


	4. IV.

Two days later Tom returns from work and finds Elsa at home as if nothing ever happened. The ironing board is set up behind the couch; she’s ironing his shirt with the palm trees.

“You know,” she says, “I was convinced it was Sophy that you were having an affair with. I wasn’t expecting it to be Edward.”

Tom notices now that one of Edward’s shirts, left in their laundry after he stayed the night, has been pressed and is hanging on the edge of the ironing board.

“Do you love him?”

Tom nods.

Silence, but for the puff of steam from the iron.

“Did you fuck him? In the Bahamas?”

He doesn’t bother to correct her. He nods.

“I tried so hard, Tom. I tried to keep us together.”

He shakes his head, and finds his voice. “No, you didn’t. You tried to keep things as they were when we were children. You’ve never seen me as anything but the scared, hurt boy next door. And you kept me that way. You scared me and you hurt me, just so you could take care of me. So I would need you. But I don’t need you anymore, because I’m not that little boy anymore. You don’t know who I really am, but Edward does. Francis does. Sophy does.” He pauses and tamps down the sick feeling in his stomach. “I can’t do this anymore.”

Elsa is silent, and Tom walks past her to her bedroom. His hands are shaking too hard to fold his clothes properly so he rolls them, stuffing them inside his suitcase. He has everything he needs in the duffel bag hidden in the closet, but this feels right. This feels final. He doesn’t have much, but his belongings fill the suitcase and he wheels it out to the door.

“Is that it? You’re giving up?”

“There’s nothing to give up on. I won’t be hurt by you anymore,” he says with a tremor in his voice. It’s misleading; he’s never felt as sure about anything as he is now. “I’m filing for divorce.”

“Because you had an affair?”

“Because you’ve spent the last ten years making sure I was alone and had nowhere to go. So you could—“ he pauses, still uncomfortable with the word, “— _abuse me_ and control me and make me miserable.”

She puts the iron down. A puff of steam rises from the metal, and Tom flinches away, edging closer to the door.

“How dare you,” she says, fair skin flushing a violent red. “Abuse is your mother dipping your legs in boiling water. Abuse is my father hitting me when he’s out of vodka. Don’t you dare compare me to them, Tom.”

“Why not?” he fires back. “I’m just as afraid to be at home with you as I was with my mother!”

He sees the anger rise in her face, sees her fingers close around the handle of the iron before it’s in the air, coming towards him. The edge catches him on the arm, burning a red line into his bicep and he yelps. It hurts. He looks at his wife for a long moment before turning to leave. The door pushes the iron out of the way and it hisses angrily as it spills water over the floor.

Suitcase in hand, he turns around one last time.

“Why was it so important to you that I was miserable?” he asks evenly.

“Because if you were happy, you would leave.”

“I’m leaving anyways.”

“I know. Don’t come back.”

He imagines showing up on Ed’s doorstep in the rain, black hair plastered across his forehead and shivering in the chill. Ed’s flat would have a warm fireplace, and he would wrap Tom in blankets and sit with him in front of the fire until Tom’s hair dried and, free of its usual product, would fall forwards across his forehead. Ed would brush it back, letting his hand linger as it cups Tom’s cheek, and he would kiss him as gently as he did on the beach in Aruba.

But it’s not raining, and nothing feels like it’s going to be okay. He’s halfway down the road towards the station when he realizes he still doesn’t know where Ed lives. Tom steers the suitcase towards the nearest bus shelter and unzips it. He hopes he remembered to take his phone. He can’t turn back now.

A bicycle bell rings as it wheels by, and Tom jumps. He finds his phone inside his camera bag ( _you love your camera more than you love me, that’s why you won’t give it up)_ and dials Ed’s number.

“Hey,” Ed says.

“Hi,” Tom answers. “I, um,”

“You okay?” Tom can hear the sound of Ed’s TV clicking off.

Tom nods, but out loud he says, “No,” and he feels his eyes fill with tears.

“Oh no, okay. Okay. I’m coming to get you. Where are you?”

“At home. Well, outside. Not home. Apartment.”

“Are you safe?”

Tom looks back towards his flat. The red patch of skin on his bicep burns. “I don’t know,” he answers.

“Okay. You should get away, then. Meet me half way? I’ll wait for you outside Charing Cross.”

“Yeah,” Tom says, and without a backwards glance, he jogs down the steps to the underground station.

Ed’s in his car glaring at a parking metre when Tom emerges back into the gloom of the afternoon.

 _What did the parking metre ever do to you?_ Tom wants to joke, but once he buckles his seatbelt, he sniffs once, twice, before the tears begin to fall. He can see Ed’s frown through his tears, but his sniffling is the only sound in the car as Ed drives them towards Greenwich.

“You told her?” he asks when he’s parked in the underground garage. Tom shakes his head.

“She already knew.” Ed’s lip curls and he mumbles _Hickey_ under his breath.

“I’m sorry,” Tom chokes out, rubbing the heels of his palms against his eyes.

“No,” Ed says, reaching for Tom. “You don’t have anything to apologize for, love. Nothing.”

There’s an elevator in Ed’s building, and they take it to the third floor. Ed’s door is directly across from the elevator. It still has a Christmas wreath hanging on the door.

The door closes with a hiss behind them, and Ed pulls Tom towards the sofa.

“Come here,” he whispers as he pulls him down on top of him. He wraps his arms around Tom’s back, letting a hand come up to stroke the back of his hair.

“It’s okay now, Tommy,” he says. “I’ve got you.”

Ed starts clearing out part of the closet for him, but Tom tells him he doesn’t need it.

“I’d rather stay packed,” he says slowly. He licks his lips, waiting for Ed to take offense.

But Ed nods and says “I’ll clear a corner so you don’t trip over your suitcase.”

Later, after Ed clears away the dishes from the dinner he cooked while Tom slept, they lie down together. The sound on the TV is turned down low. Tom doesn’t recognize the program, but he hasn’t had much time in his life to become familiar with television shows.

“Why are you so good at this?” he asks Ed.

“Hmm?”

Ed’s face is buried in the back of Tom’s neck, and he can feel the vibrations against his skin. A hand strokes up Tom’s side. It’s heavy and doesn’t tickle like Elsa’s used to.

“I’ve done it before,” Ed says. “And I went to therapy.”

Tom doesn’t know what to say, so he rolls over and kisses him.

That night, Ed tells him about Will. They’re lying in the same position they did the first night they were together, Tom’s head resting on Ed’s chest, his hand flat against his belly. They are undressed down to their underwear just to feel their skin press together. Ed’s arm is warm where it wraps around Tom’s shoulders.

“He’s dead now,” is how he starts. “A car wreck. I was unhappy. Not because of him, but just because.” Tom has seen the neat line of pill bottles lined up on Ed’s bathroom counter. _Escitalopram. Lorazepam. Bupropion. Aripiprazole._

“He couldn’t imagine not being responsible for my emotions, I guess. Our whole lives revolved around each other. I thought I was in love, but I think I just liked letting someone else make decisions for me. I’ve learned now that he was a narcissist that used me to feed his own ego, but back then I had no idea. I saw that my undiagnosed depression made him upset, so I tried to hide it. I went home after I graduated university—back to Jersey—and my parents barely recognized me. I told them they were overreacting, but I went to—and don’t laugh, _swear_ you won’t laugh—I went to see my horse, Marengo—“

“Marengo?”

“Napoleon’s horse. I was a short kid, it seemed fitting. I saw her and I just broke down. So I went riding, which is such a rich kid stereotype, but it made me realise I hadn’t laughed in almost a year.”

“So what did you do?”

“I told my dad. I said ‘I think I’m in a bad relationship.’ I didn’t know. Even now I still doubt my own memories. But I told him, and he listened, and even though I was twenty four years old he drove me to my old family doctor’s office and he started me on meds. And then I went back, and Will picked me up from the airport, and I told him I had to take care of myself and I wanted to break things off. Then he got mad, drove into oncoming traffic, and I woke up in the hospital.”

“Holy shit,” Tom says.

“I have a little scar right here,” Ed says. He moves Tom’s hand until it rests over his right breast. There’s a little pink circle, smaller than Tom’s pinky fingernail, where no hair grows.

“That’s where they decompressed my lung,” Ed says proudly. “I punctured a lung and all the air was leaking out into my chest cavity. The pressure would have kept going up until it collapsed my right lung if they hadn’t stuck this huge needle in my chest.”

“Do you remember it?”

“No. But I remember when they told me Will was dead. And I remember when they told me two passengers in the other car were dead and the driver was in the ICU. She had the bed next to mine. I used to whisper apologies to the wall, hoping she’d hear me.”

“You didn’t do anything, Edward.”

“I know. I thought I did. I thought if I had waited a little longer, or told him earlier, or if I had offered to drive… But I didn’t, and he’s the one at fault, no matter how you look at it. It’s a lot easier to see the state of your relationship when they try to kill you, and a lot easier to get over someone when they’re gone.”

Tom turns in Ed’s arms and pulls his arm around his chest. He can feel the hair on Ed’s chest tickle his back, and it feels nice.

“I think I’m ready to try,” Tom says, and the last thing he feels before drifting off to sleep is the press of a soft kiss against his cheek.

* * *

Tom takes him along to Exeter, and all the worries Edward has about imposing on Tom’s sister and brother-in-law evaporate as soon as Kate opens her door and hugs Tom, then immediately pulls Edward in for a hug as well. Her pregnant belly bumps against his stomach.

“Edward, yeah?” He nods. Tom is already inside with a two year old girl in his arms, spinning her around while she giggles. “Don’t worry about imposing, I knew you were coming. ‘I can’t be without him right now,’ our Tommy said. He trusts you. Don’t give me cause to doubt you.”

“I won’t.”

She nods and, with a hand braced against her back, leads him inside.

Colin is just as welcoming as his wife.

“Tommy!” he booms in his deep Irish accent. He reminds Edward of Francis.

“Hi,” Tom says with uncharacteristic shyness. He lifts a hand in greeting.

Colin raises his eyebrows and scoops Tom up in a hug, lifting him off the ground as Tom squawks and turns pink around the ears. Edward looks away to save him his dignity.

“This is the boyfriend?” Colin asks, nodding towards Edward.

“Edward,” Edward says, sticking out a hand. Colin grabs it and pulls him in for a bear hug of his own.

“Oof,” Edward says when his feet leave the ground. Tom is laughing. Edward will endure Colin’s manhandling for eternity if it makes Tom laugh.

They sit down for dinner with Kate at the head of the table. Colin is sitting next to Arden in her high chair, cutting up bits of cheese and strawberries for her. Edward sits down across from Colin, thinking Tom will sit across from his sister but he picks up his chair and moves it next to Edward’s. Tom holds Edward’s hand on top of the table while he eats with his right hand, Edward with his left. Despite the pain of finding a pair of scissors that won’t give him a hand cramp, being born left-handed feels the greatest thing that has ever happened to Edward, if just for this.

“So,” Colin says, “what happened with Elzbieta?”

Tom looks down at his lap. Edward squeezes his hand.

“She’s abusive and I’m leaving her.”

“Good for you, Tommy. Is Edward here your rebound?” Colin jokes.

“No!” Tom looks between the two men in horror.

Colin throws his hands up. Arden throws a piece of cheese at him. It sticks to his bald head. “Just a joke, boys. I’ve never seen you so happy.”

“Edward saved me,” Tom says quietly.

“You don’t give yourself enough credit.” Edward says.

“No, but meeting you was the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Without you, I wouldn’t have realized who I am, and I wouldn’t have realized that I lost him. Without you I would never have known what real love feels like.”

“Christ,” Kate says. She picks at her slice of roast chicken before pushing the plate away. “We get it, you’re in love!” She rolls her eyes but smiles at their joined hands.

Arden claps her hands together. “Strawberry,” she says, before picking up her last piece of strawberry and throwing it with astonishing force and precision towards Edward. It hits him right between the eyes.

“I think she likes you, mate,” Colin says. He peels the piece of cheese off his head and begins to clear the table.

* * *

Arden likes Uncle Ned a lot.

That night, she demands Uncle Ned read her a bedtime story. By the morning, she will only eat her porridge if Uncle Ned feeds her, pretending her spoon is a choo-choo-train. She spends the afternoon toddling after him in the garden, holding the dandelions he pulls up in the flowerbeds.

“I’m out of milk,” Kate says to Tom from the couch. She’s curled up on her side in pain. “They’re fake contractions, don’t worry. I won’t make you birth your nephew.”

“I would,” Tom says.

“Maybe next time,” she answers wryly. “But I will make you run to the store and pick me up some milk and some pickled beets.”

Tom looks out the window where Ed is now lying on his back in the grass with Arden crawling over him like he’s a luxury playground. She somersaults off his chest like it’s a diving board.

“Uncle Ned! Uncle Ned! Did you see that!” she squeals, and he can’t hear Ed’s answer through the window but Arden shouts something and takes a bow.

Tom ducks out and walks down the lane to the nearest shop. He’s never given much thought to children beyond the growing dread of raising a family with Elsa. He never imagined himself as a warm parent, full of love to give. He doubted he had a natural inclination for being a father. Watching Ed and Arden play together, though, has made him think. He can see himself and Ed as dads, attending parent-teacher interviews together and helping their child make cookies for school bake sales and all the things that Tom could never participate in at school.

 _It’s still new_ , he reminds himself in the dairy aisle, but on impulse, he picks a horse plushie out of the discount bin and throws it in his basket because its big brown eyes remind him of Ed.

When he gets back to Kate’s house, Edward is passed out in bed with Arden next to him. Tom puts away the groceries and tucks himself in next to Ed, wedging the stuffed horse under Ed’s arm. He isn’t tired, not really, but he’s so comfortable that he drifts off to a warm and relaxing sleep

The click of his camera shutter wakes him up.

“Oh, that’s a good one,” Kate says.

“They better put it on the Christmas card this year,” Colin says.

“Definitely.”

Tom blinks away the sleep and sits up, only to be restrained by Edward’s arm on his chest. He squirms, only to be hit in the face with the stuffed horse.

“Noooooo,” Edward moans, wriggling closer.

The camera clicks again. Kate grins from behind the flash.

“Should I get the spatula to pry him out of bed?” Colin asks. “Dinner’s ready.”

“Wanna stay with Tom,” Ed mumbles, arm tightening around him.

The fondness he feels for Edward only grows when Kate and Colin leave them alone and Edward presses a flurry of kisses against his neck.

“Mmm, love you,” Ed says against his skin.

“Come on, love. If we stay any longer they’ll think we’re having sex.”

“Why prove them wrong?” Ed says with a smile. His hands begin to wander south.

“ _Edward Little!_ If I don’t eat first I might faint in the middle of it.”

Ed rubs his bearded cheek against the soft skin of Tom’s neck. “’M so comfy. You’re comfy.”

“You’re difficult, you are,” Tom says, but he kisses the top of Edward’s head fondly.

“I’ll always get out of bed for you.”

“I won’t always make you.”

Edward finally releases Tom and gives the plush horse a squeeze. “He’s soft.”

“It made me think of you.”

“That might be the nicest thing anyone’s ever done for me.”

“I think I can do better than a stuffed horse on sale at the convenience store down the road.”

“You could buy me a stuffed horse instead of a wedding ring and I’d still throw myself at your feet.”

“Who said anything about wedding rings?”

“I want to give you a home,” Edward says suddenly, seriously. “A real home. One that’s yours as much as mine. Ours, together.”

“Oh,” Tom breathes. “I’d like that.”

“Stay with me until then?”

“Yes. Please, yes. Of course I will, Ed. I never want to be away from you.”

“And I’ll follow you anywhere, Tommy.”

The sound of clinking dishes carries from the kitchen. “Follow me to dinner, then?”

Ed sits up in defeat. “You’re clever. And lovely.”

“So you’ve said. Come on.”

“I found them, you know,” Kate says the next day. They’re at a little café tucked away just off the high street. “I’m meeting them here in an hour.”

Tom takes a sip of his iced latte. He watches the people walk by their outdoor table on their way to lunch or the movie theatre or the row of shops that line the road.

“Who?” he asks absentmindedly.

“Jules and Anna. The Babies. Our siblings.”

Tom’s mouth goes dry. The last time he saw them, they were crying while the social worker bundled them into her van, asking where Mama was. Kate’s hand was on Tom’s shoulder, holding him back. He wanted to go and hug them and tell them that he tried his best but the doctor found out that Mommy was the one who stuck the screwdriver in his leg and everyone at the hospital was scared to let him go home. He had to go, he said, because he had to take care of the babies in the crib. Then a new lady showed up and asked him lots of questions, and then the police showed up and asked him even more questions, and then they phoned Kate and she cried and told them the truth but lied about her age so she could keep Tommy close.

“They don’t want to see me,” he says.

“They do, actually. They’re not kids anymore, Tom. They understand what happened.”

“Have you seen Mom?”

Kate snorts. “No. It’s not my job to mend a relationship that never existed.”

“But what if she’s different now?”

“Have you visited her?”

“No,” Tom admits.

“Why?”

“Because I’m scared of her.”

“Exactly. That’s not family. Your friends in London that you told me about—that’s a family. People who help each other and care for each other. People who protect each other and make each other feel safe. She took that away from us. She’s no one to us.”

Tom stirs his drink and shakes his head. “I spent so much time thinking she’d come back for us one day.”

Kate stares into her tea. “I should have done something sooner. I’m sorry, Tommy. I’m so sorry I left you alone with her. I never thought—“ she shakes her head.

“What could you have done? We were kids. We were both just kids.” He takes a sip of his drink to swallow back the tears that threaten to spill.

“I thought Elsa would be safe,” Kate says, eyes closed.

“She was.”

“For how long?”

“For as long as she saw me as a victim. Someone she could take care of, someone who needed her help. But when I found a hobby, or friends of my own, everything I did was a problem. I spent too much time with my friends, too much money on my hobbies; but when I didn’t have either of those I spent too much time at home, ‘spreading my depression’. My happiness was as much an inconvenience as my unhappiness, so I just became… complacent. I let her make decisions for me because I knew she wouldn’t start a fight over them. Taking the job at the Mariner was the first decision I made for myself—and I mean _for_ myself—in years, and she hated it from the beginning. And then I met Francis and Sophy and Edward… it was everything she was afraid of. When I left I asked her why she wanted me to be unhappy. She said that if I was happy, I would have left a long time ago. And she was right. It took falling in love to break through that sense of complacency and made me realize I could be happy. I could allow myself to be happy, no matter what she wanted for me. And I am, now. I’m so, so happy that I have you and Ed and Arden and all my friends in London. And I think, maybe, things are—“

He’s interrupted by a shout of joy and a pair of unfamiliar adults pulling up chairs to his and Kate’s table.

“Tommy?” the taller one with short hair and eyeliner says.

“Oh my God, it is Tommy!” the other one says, her long braided hair swinging behind her. “It’s me! Anna?”

“Holy shit,” Tom says. Jules and Anna have grown up into well-adjusted adults.

“I don’t think you guys had names last time he saw you, cut him some slack,” Kate says. She rests her hands on her belly. “Speaking of, what do you think of ‘Orlando’ for your nephew’s name?”

“Arden and Orlando,” Jules says. “It’s good.”

“Oh! Like in _As You Like It_! The forests of Arden and Orlando, who plasters his bad poetry all over the trees! Then you can have Rosalind or Celia for the next girl and Jacques or Oliver for a boy!”

“Anna’s doing a MA in Shakespearean literature,” Kate says.

“Makes sense,” Tom says to cover up the sense of awe that he has towards his younger sister.

“There’s no saying your kid will _want_ their birth name when they grow up, though,” Jules adds. “What if Arden doesn’t believe in gender like her Auncle Jules?”

“Hon, she can’t even eat her food without throwing it at Colin’s head. We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“Tom!” Anna interrupts, “What are you doing these days?”

Tom looks into his drink, watching the ripples across the surface as the table wobbles. The remaining ice cubes clink together. “I’m, er, a photographer. I work for a magazine in London. And I’m divorcing my wife for my best friend.”

He laughs at the absurdity of the statement.

“It’s more romantic than he makes it sound,” Kate offers while Tom chuckles quietly. He never thought he’d have a best friend, let alone one he’d fall in love with. “Honestly, Tom, it’s about time you have something nice.”

Jules and Anna exchange a look.

“While we’re here, we want to thank you. For taking care of us.”

Tom shakes his head. “I’m sorry I got Mom taken away.”

Anna chokes on her drink. “Tommy, she was an abusive drug addict who neglected us. She kept me locked in a crib until I was _five years old_. And with everything she did to you…”

“You were so small,” Tom says quietly. “And you cried so hard when they took you away.”

“I only remember you crying behind the crib. I didn’t know what it meant then, but now I understand. You got us out, Tommy,” Jules says. “I know we were lucky. We were given a good family and raised like their own kids, but I always remembered you crying. So thanks, I guess.”

“Thanks for getting stabbed with a screwdriver and spilling everything to the doctor?”

Jules doesn’t smile. “Yeah,” they say seriously. “I’ve never resented you for getting Mom arrested. She deserved it. I don’t care that she gave birth to us. She’s never been our mother. She’ll never be family. Not after what she did to you.”

Tom chokes back a sob. “I just need to know—did you have a good life?”

Anna wipes her eyes with a napkin, but her tears still fall. “Yes.”

Jules does the same, but leaves two streaks of black mascara across the white napkin. “Yeah,” they say. “Did you?”

Tom shakes his head. “Not really. But I think things are going to change.”

_One Year Later_

They’re sitting in the car outside Tom’s old apartment. Ed’s car doesn’t hum like it used to. Instead it idles in halting, clunky bursts.

“It still runs,” Ed had said a month before, and he signed his name on the mortgage agreement, just below Tom’s, without another word.

Tom still has a packed bag hidden in their new flat. When he next checks the back of the coat closet, he will find Ed’s green duffel bag sat next to his, with a note that says _make sure you remember to bring me with you._ He won’t tell Ed when he finds it, but he’ll hold him a little bit tighter after the sheets become tangled around their bodies and they lay together, hip pressed against hip, in the dying light of the evening.

“Are you ready?” Edward asks. He worries his bottom lip with his teeth and his knuckles rap against the steering wheel.

Tom looks up at the dull, grey building. He waits for the slow, creeping dread to fill his belly and when it doesn’t, he nods.

“Yes,” he says, more for himself than for Ed. Despite the sounds coming from the engine, the car door opens smoothly, and Tom steps out into the drizzle. “I’ll be back soon.” He shuts the door and takes a step away from the car before stepping back and opening the door again. “I love you,” he says, and shuts the door once more.

The apartment looks the same as when he left it for the last time a year ago. He wonders how Elsa can live among the memories that haunt the small, dreary rooms like malevolent ghosts.

“I didn’t think you would come,” she says by way of greeting.

“I wanted to.”

She gestures to the kitchen table and puts on the kettle without a word, filling it up at the empty sink and plugging it into the outlet next to the sink instead of the one next to the stove where it is supposed to go. Tom does not comment. He sits.

The silent minutes stretch on until the water boils and Elsa pours the steaming water into two cups. She opens the freezer, cracks an ice tray, and fills one of the mugs with ice cubes. The crack of the ice as Elsa pours hot tea into his mug makes the hair on the back of Tom’s neck stand up. He imagines that it is his skin crackling and melting as Elsa pours the boiling water over his hands. He withdraws his hands from the table and slides them under his thighs.

“I’ve started seeing someone,” she says.

Tom’s hands twitch from where they are safely tucked away.

“A psychologist,” she clarifies, “not, oh God, Tom, not—no. Her name is Susan.”

“That’s… good,” he says. “So have I. We talk about my mum, mostly.” He clarifies half out of habit, half out of fear of what interpretation Elsa will find.

“Susan says the first step towards healing is to apologize to the people I’ve hurt. There’s no one I’ve hurt more than you.”

Tom stares down at his mug, reaches a careful hand out and swirls the liquid around. The two chunks of ice that remain clink against each other.

Elsa bites her lip. It’s an unfamiliar gesture, and Tom thinks of Edward waiting in the car on the street below.

“I’m sorry I wanted to control you, and I’m sorry that I did. I’m sorry that I couldn’t say I was so terrified of you leaving that I was driving you away on purpose. I’m sorry for all the times I hurt you, on purpose or by accident, and—“ the tears that fill her eyes begin to fall. Some fall onto the scuffed and marked tabletop, hitting the surface and splashing up like raindrops, and some cling to her cheeks and chin, dripping off to join the others on the table when she does not wipe them away fast enough.

“I’m so sorry about the water,” she whispers. She buries her face in her hands and weeps silently, the heaving of her shoulders the only sign of the truth of her feelings.

Tom stares down at the ring of water his mug leaves on the table and fights the instinct to comfort her.

“I forgive you,” he says, and Elsa cries harder.

“I don’t deserve it.”

An unbidden memory comes to him, one from decades earlier.

“Remember the first time I ran away from home?” he asks.

“Yeah,” Elsa says, a laugh cutting through the thickness of her tears.

“I only made it halfway down the block because Mrs. Patel’s dog barked at me and I got scared. I went to the safest place I could think of. I knocked on your door, hoping your dad was out at the pub or already passed out.”

“And then we played Scrabble for six hours while listening to your mum go absolutely bonkers next door when you wouldn’t come when she called for you.”

“Yeah,” Tom smiles sadly. They both know the rest of the story. It’s written on their bodies: the scar on Elsa’s neck, the crooked little finger on Tom’s left hand.

“I remember feeling safe with you. I hate you for taking that away from me,” he says. It shocks him to hear it said aloud almost as much as it shocks Elsa. “But I forgive you.”

He stands. _Is that all?_ he wants to ask. His hands start to shake, so he doesn’t.

“Okay,” is all she says, and she opens the door and watches him leave.

Ed had pulled the car around the back entrance like he said he would. Tom is still not used to his reliability and is surprised to see the grey sedan parked in a stall marked _visitor parking._ When he sits down in the passenger seat, Ed wraps a cold hand around the back of his neck and pulls him in for a kiss.

“She apologized,” Tom says. Ed reverses the car and pulls out onto the road. “And I told her I hate her, but I forgive her.”

“Do you?” Ed looks at him curiously when he stops at a red light.

Tom nods, and he finally feels free.

Later that night, on their turn to host the Mariner’s monthly staff dinner, Tom will be hit with the sudden realization that he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world. He will insist on serving because he is hosting, and he’s never had enough friends to host a dinner party before. He will look around the table, from Francis and Sophy to Blanky and Esther; from John and Tommy Hartnell (now engaged and still as in love as the day they met) to the Hodgsons and their little girl (who now resembles a toddler more than a potato); from Eddie Hoar and his new partner (they met on a Sims 4 message board, naturally) to Edward, who sits at his side and smiles up at him like he painted the night sky, and Tom will try to take it all in, trying to commit this feeling to memory. It will take a squeeze on his hand and Blanky’s raucous laughter (“squeeze him on the arse instead!”) for Tom to realize that this feeling is one he no longer has to savour. This is his life; this is his family.

And later, as the others leave, he will rub at the soft skin that covers his wrist. Ed will kiss him there, right over his pulse point, before they make love. Once they are both naked and bared, he will take Tom’s right hand and turn it over gently, rub his thumb down the palm, and bring it to his lips. His lips will barely caress the skin, but Tom will feel it. He can always feel it. And it’s then that Tom will reach for him, close his eyes and let himself be manoeuvred onto their bed with Edward’s solid weight pushing him down onto the mattress. Whatever turn their lovemaking will take, whether he is grounded by the grip of Ed’s legs wrapped around his hips or caged between his strong arms, the flash of violet light in his eyes when he comes will, as always, be accompanied by a whisper of _you’re safe here_. And during whatever follows—a shared shower, a late-night movie, or one of the nights where they wrap each other up in arms and legs and blankets before drifting off to sleep—he will let the feeling wash over him like the gently lapping waves of a solitary beach in Aruba, and he will know he is safe.

But this will come later. For now, he lays his hand over Ed’s on the gear shift and says, “Let’s go home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks first to the organizers of Big Bang for making this event happen and for always being there to answer my questions. Thanks to all the other writers and our Discord sprint marathons for the encouragement and motivation to finish. Thanks to Claire Keegan, one of my favourite writers, for inspiring me to experiment with style and content and write something that I would never have thought to share a few years ago. Thanks to my amazing girlfriend for listening to me talk about this fic for months despite never getting to read it until now. And finally, thank you to @winterlain for vibing with me and creating the amazing art pieces for this fic. Thank you for taking a chance on the fic with 5000 content warnings and thank you for somehow understanding exactly what I'm thinking.


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